FOREST AND STREAM 
rSEPT. 20, 1902. 
— ® — 
Proprietors of fishing resorts will find it pro^table to advertise 
them in Fobest and StrsjlU. 
Fi&h and Fishing. 
A Monst.r Halilut. 
The other day while endeavoring to trace, for the 
benefit of Forest and Stream's readers, the source of 
the rumor that the North Atlantic tuna, or horse mack- 
erel, had already been taken in Canadian waters by rod 
and line fishing, I came across a well-known local angler, 
who probably holds the record for the largest halibut 
taken by an amateur fisherman, In fact, not very many 
larger ones are knoAvn to have been caught by pro- 
fessionals oft any of the coasts of tlie Dominion. The 
fish in question Aveighed 325 pounds, and was caught ofiE 
the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence some time 
ago by Col. L. P. Vohl, fire commissioner, and formerly 
chief of police in the city of Quebec. The Colonel is 
not only himself a most trustwortliy aitthorit3\ but lia-s 
for voucher of the present story no less unquestionable a 
witness than Mr. Napoleon Comeatij^ the well-known 
explorer, scientist and sportsman of GodboUt. Messrs. 
Comeau and Vohl had gone together to visit a brother 
of the former, who resides near the Caribou Islands, a 
few miles east of Trinity Bay. on the north shore of the 
Gulf. Thej'^ went oitt codfishing very early one morning 
iust off the islands in an otdinary fishing boat, using 
small portions of herring for bait. They had anchored 
their boat, and the Colonel was lilting out of the water a 
codfish about two feet long, at the end of his line, when 
he saw an enormous white mass turn itself over near the 
surface of the water and then disappear from view. He 
called Comeau's attention to the incident, and though 
the latter had not seen the movement, he knew that it 
must have been caused by a halibut, and decided that 
they would both stop fishing for cod and endeavor to 
hook the larger fish. Taking up a large herring and 
splitting it in two along its entire length, Comeau placed 
one-half on each hook. It was not very long before the 
Colonel- felt something tugging at the end of his line. 
While the hook remained near the bottom nothing oc- 
curred. He had remembered that his bait and the cod- 
fish which took it were near the top of the water before 
the halibut had appeared in pursuit, so he gradually drew 
up the line, and had lifted it some distance from the bot- 
tom, when the big fish took hold. He instinctively 
tugged back to fasten the hook, and Comeau caught hold 
of the line to make sure what was on it. His experience 
enabled him to decide at once that the Colonel had 
hooked a halibut, though there was nothing at that time 
to indicate that it was anything like the tnonstei- that it 
proved to be. Both men had been fishing with lines of 
on]y thirty fathoms each, and their -boat was anchored. 
Comeau immediatebr handed back the Colonel's line to 
him, unwound it, and fastened his own to the other end 
of it, to avoid being taken by surprise. They had only 
come prepared for cod, and had brought no gaff with 
them. Now they were fast to a halibut, which was not 
very long in proving himself a strong and heavy fish. 
Fortunately two fishermen were out in another boat 
nearly half a mile aw'ay. These they hailed, and called 
them to their assistance. They brouglit their boat along- 
side and boarded the other, bringing with them both a 
gaff and a spear, the latter being such as is used for horse 
mackerel and porpoises. Without these weapons and 
the aid of the two fishermen it is certain that the Colonel 
could never have saved his fish. Its game qualities were, 
very fortunately, far from equal to its size and weight, 
and when the latter had been overcome, and the cod line 
used by the Colonel had proved its strength sufficient to 
bring the halibut to within a few feet of the too of the 
water, a well directed stroke of the spear buried the 
weapon in the body of the fish, w^hich was soon brought 
near enough for another good hold of it to be taken by 
the gaff. The main struggle between the fish and its 
captors was yet to come, however, for it took the com- 
bined strength of four men, lifting with both spear and 
gaff to get the monster into the boat. In American 
waters, larger specimens of this fish have been taken, 
. though not very frequently. Jordan and Evermann de- 
clare that it sometimes reaches a weight of 400 pounds. 
Yarrell, in his "British Fishes." says that in April. 1828, 
a halibut 7 feet 6 inches in length and 3 feet 6 inches 
in breadth and weighing 320 pounds was taken ott the 
Isle of Man and sent to Edinburgh market, and that it 
was said to have been the largest specimen ever ex- 
hibited there. The male halibut, according to Dr. G. 
Brown Goode, rarely exceeds 50 pounds in weight, 
while the average weight of a full-grown femals is some- 
what between 100 and 150 pounds, though sometimes 
ipuch heavier. He records the capture of ten or twelve 
fish off the New England Coast weighing between 300- 
and 400 pounds, in the coiu-se of aboiit ten years. This, 
however, is only about one of this size each year. 
Wholes tic Distruction of Labrador SalmoD, 
Major-General Dashwood, one of the best living 
authorities upon field snorts in Newfoundland and 
Labrador, and author of "Chiploquorgan ; or Life by the 
Camp Fire in Canada and Newfoundland," which was 
published in Dubijn, in 1871, is calling attention to the 
wholesale destruction of salmon on the Newfoundland 
and Labrador coasts by the cod traps which are now so 
plentiful there. Interviewed in Montreal, he said that 
there were now thousands of these traps along the 
coasts, and that they are utterly destroying the salmon 
fishery. They are far worse, as he points out, than the 
salmon nets, for these latter are from 5 to 6 inches in 
mesh, which easily let through the small, immature 
salmon of 4 pounds and thereabouts, that abound upon 
the coast, while the cod traps, which arc only required 
by law to have a mesh of 4 inches, and which are often 
of a still smaller mesh, gather up all tne erilse and small 
salmon, over 300 of them being sometimes caught in a 
single sweep' of a eod trap. One fisherman told the 
General that a certain river pn the Labrador coast had 
^yielded him thirty-five to fifty bg.FeIs of fftlrnon per 
annum when he netted the mouth without barring the 
stream, but that since the cod traps had becottie so 
common the average yield of his nets was only about 
eight barrels, The Hudson Bay Company had only 
collected sonle foi'ty tierces of salmon this season at 
Rigolette, while in former times the yield there was over 
.300 tierces. 
Cod Fishefy Threatened. 
Serious as is the threatened destruction of the Labrador 
and Newfoundland salmon industry, the dreaded result 
tc the great codfishery of Newfoundland from the coil- 
tinued employment of the cod traps is very much more 
serious still. The destruction of this fisherj^ would ttlean 
abfohite ruin and national bankruptcy to Britain's old- 
est colony, and this destruction is seriously threatened 
at the present time. The trap system is killing all the 
young cod which encounter it, and the longer it is al- 
lowed to continue the scarcer will the fish become. The 
small cod are of no value wdiatever. They are simply 
caught and thrown away. As a result, the fish are not 
only becoming scarcer, but of a much smaller si^e, 
It is pointed out by those who have carefully studied 
the problem, that if this system is not put an end to, it 
cannot be yety many years before the industry will be 
killed- Many of the fishermen are alreadj- awakening 
to the true facts of the case, and are in favor of going 
back to the old practice of hook and line fishing for cod, 
providing it is made compulsory for all engaged in the 
industry. They know that if this were done, the sunoly 
of fish, which of late has been steadily declining, would 
.soon increase, and that they would save more money by 
iti for the outlay for traps is A'ery large as compared with 
that for hooks and lines, and a trap costing from $350 
to $500 is often destroyed by gales of wind or movements 
of the ice. It is now some fifteen years since the cod 
traps were introduced. Ten years ago, the evils resulting 
from their use became so evident that an act was passed 
to abolish them. Thanks to the influence of the fish 
nierchants, however, who only seem to care for present 
profits, the law was repealed before it came into force. 
The importance of the codfishery to the people of 
Newfoundland, and the absolute ruin of the country 
which must folloAV its destruction, is illustrated by the 
fact that 56,000 heads of families, out of the total pop- 
ulation of 210,000, are engaged in catching and curing 
fish, and only 12,000 in all other occupations. Over 
20,000 Newfounlanders and a thousand vessels are en- 
gaged every summer in the codfishery of Labrador, 
where 600,000 quintals of 112 pound.s each are annually 
taken. The entire export of the island is about 1,350,000 
quintals, and the annual A-alue of the take of cod fully 
$7,000,000. 
Until the introduction of trap nets and the consequent 
wholesale destruction of the immature fish, there was no 
apparent decrease in the supply of cod, though an 
average of seventy million fish was captured by New- 
foundlanders alone by hook and line. The natural in- 
crease of the cod is enormous, and tlie Arctic current, 
which washes the shores of Labrador and Newfound- 
land, is laden with the food on which the commercial 
fishes live and thrive, and brings with it a never-failing 
supply for their sustenance. 'The Arctic seas and the 
great rivers which they send forth are swarming with 
minute forms of life, constituting in many places what 
has been well called "a living mass, a vast ocean of 
living slime." Upon this "slime food" live the almost 
microscopic crustaceans. They in turn furnish food for 
the caplin, the squid .and the herring, which, with mul ' 
titudes of other forms, arc devoured by the cod. 
E. T. D, Chambers. 
Russia's Great Fishery Exhibition, 
{Concluded from last week.) 
It is Russia's proud boast that the wrealth of her in- 
land waters in Coregoni, or the whitefish family, is not 
elsewhere equalled. In her western domain she enjoys 
an abundance of the great and little marane (C. alhula 
and C. maraena), the Dwina and Petschora product, espe- 
pecially in its dried and smoked forms, contributing 
largely to the sustenance of the mases. Beside the 
species mentioned Russia claims the possession of nine 
others, most of them incident to her Siberian waters. 
In our great lakes and in the many streams and lakes 
great and small of Alaska and Canada, there exist at least 
nine species of whitefish, and according to the classifica- 
tion of some authorities, fully a dozen; so that Russia's 
claim to an exceptional diversity is open to question. 
To the future leading peoples of the world, the Saxon 
and the Slav, belongs the development of its subarctic 
region, nine-tenths of which is included in the domain of 
Russia, Canada and the United States. Canada possesses 
an extraordinary wealth of fish in her thousands of lakes 
and lakelets, scattered over her immense territory; tiie 
waters of Hudson's Bay likewise teem with finny life, 
all of which aquatic treasure will ultimately find a mar- 
ket over the railroads now under wa}' that will extend 
from the Dominion's great inland sea, westward through 
the Peace River region to the Pacific. Canada's terri- 
tory is inferior in extent to that of Asiatic Russia; she 
has not its mighty rivers, but she will doubtless be a 
good second in the product of her inland fisheries. Rus- 
sia's exhibit of whitefish was as ample and as instructive 
as any other branch of her great fishery exposition, the 
design and execution of which reflects lasting honor 
upon her far-seeing Government. 
Other fish that figured largely in the brilliantly lighted 
building have perhaps little interest to the American 
reader, as compared with those already discussed. It 
may be mentioned, however, that Russia's annual yield 
of herrings, carp and perch is in excess of two thousand 
million pounds. The herring catch is mainly of the 
famous Astrachaii herring, a fish perhaps aA^eraging in 
length iJ/S feet and weight of 2}^ pounds, the product of 
Caspian waters. Some of the great fishery firms trans- 
act an enormous business, thus the Sapojnikoff Brothers 
and the Bessubikoff Brothers direct fishery operations 
in the Astrachan of immense magnitude and which were 
well represented at the exhibition. Of the Sauojnikoff 
Brothers it may be said that their fishery has been ear- 
ned on in the delta of the Volga since 1796, and their 
ownership in connection therewith extends over an area 
of a hundred .sqtlafe miles, beside that covered by other 
fishery grounds rented from the Crown for an annual 
payment of 200,000 rubles. Ten thousand men are reg- 
ularly employed, a number that upon emergencies is 
largely increased, the annual value of their product being 
from one and a half to two and a half million rubles, 
and comprising about a score of different species of fish, 
aggregating a weight of over 40,000.000 pounds. Thg 
firm has large buildings for cleaning and eviscerating; the 
fish, dryiiig liDhses, salting houses, snloke houses and 
freezing houses. The greater portion of the catch is 
salted, about 20,060 tons of salt being annually Coti-_ 
sumed; a portion is shipped in ice, for which purpose 
the firm has sixteen ice houses. 
Beside the large firms mentioned, there are others; 
indeed, the Caspian fisheries may be said to be exploited 
by large aggregations of capital. Apart from the econo- 
mies effected by such a scale of operation, there are others 
resulting from a fuller observance of the restrictions 
of the conserving regulations of the Government; for, 
being intelligent beneficiaries, the large firms appreciata 
their vaitie. 
Salt fish is in Russia a sta,ple article of diet with the. 
laborer and the peasant, and is afforded, at a very low 
price. Indulgence, however, is not unattended with 
danger, for deaths are not infrequently occasioned by the 
so-called Russian salt fish poison; technically speaking, 
a ptomaine resulting from the decomposition of ill- 
cured fish. Nowhere in the world does fish assume such 
a variety of alimentary forms, and a study of their mode 
of preparation might be profit.able to some of our great 
food purveyors. 
In Russia the fishery methods employed are as diverse 
as its peoples, and were given a full representation at 
the exliibition. The appliances for the most part were 
similar to thoSe elsewhere in use; but there was much 
that was novel, especially those of the various tribes of 
clans of Cossacks, ®f which the liinils of this article do 
not aditiit of a description. In the French department 
there was a noteworthj^ exhibit, so designed as to effec- 
tually portry Ihe operation of the nets, casting, drawing, 
etc., a realistic impression being made by the arrange- 
inent of sheets of glass in conjunction Avith other de- 
vices, giving effects of a floating or immersion of the 
nets in water. 
For many years prior to the initiation of the Siberia 
Transcontinental railroad, the Russian Government had 
from time to time despatched naturalists, geologists 
and other scientific investigators, with a view of ac- 
quiring the fullest knowledge of the country's resources. 
The result of these purely official undertakings were not 
made known; indeed, the reports of nearly all that have 
since been promoted have never seen the light. At this 
exhibition, however, the outcome of some recent re- 
searches in connection with the Siberian fisheries was 
made public, and the specimens given the fullest display. 
There was also much of interest in the exhibits of the 
various imperial biological stations, Avith their maps and 
photographs, and their array of instruments and appli- 
ances for taking deep-water temperatures, bottom sam- 
ples, also hatching apparatus, and various paraphernalia. 
The piscine resources of the province of Russian Fin- 
land, the land of a thousand lakes, were effectively set 
forth, whitefish and salmon figuring largely in the rep- 
resentation. The Russian sardine (Sardellen) industry 
Avas well presented, and there was also an interesting dis- 
play of rods, nets, reels and other appliances of the 
sporting angler. 
A consideration of the_ numerous foreign exhibits 
would perhaps be of little interest to the casual reader. 
It may, however, be said of Japan that her contribution 
represented^ the labor of a force of fishermen and fish 
artificers that, according to a statement of the Japanese 
Minister of Agriculture, numbered three and a half- mil- 
lions in 1891, operating a fleet of four hundred thousand 
boats, to which the annual renewals or additions num- 
bered three thousand, the total product of 1899 being 
A^alued at about $52,000,000. Herrings, sardines, tunnies, 
mackerel, cod and salmon formed the bulk of the catch, 
which, cured in various ways, is largely marketed in 
China. Japan has a fine and well equipped biological 
station at Tokio, publishes a fishery journal, and ap- 
pears to be abreast of her sister nations in pisciculture 
and in all things appertaining to the welfare of her im- 
mense fishing interests. 
During the month of March there v/as held in connec- 
tion Avith the exhibition, a congress of pisciculturists and 
fishery experts, at which, together with various other 
matters of interest, there Avas discussed the question of 
fresh fish transportation, better and more effective meth- 
ods being strongly advocated. Possiblj^ as a result of 
this agitation it has just been announced that the Alex- 
androAvski car works of St. Petersburg, are turning out 
refrigerator cars of an entirely new type, patterned after 
the meat-carrying ships that bear through the tropics 
the perishable products of the antipodes, to become 
the sustenance of the masses of the opposite zone. No 
particulars of construction are given, but the statement 
Avould imply that refrigeratiA-e machinery, instead of ice, 
is to be employed. It Avas given out that the new trans- 
portation serAace AA^as to be initiated during the present 
summer, betAveen Tomsk, Siberia, and St. Petersburg. 
With the old style vehicle it was found impracticable 
during the hot months to transport Siberian fresh meat 
OA-er the vast stretch of railway extending to eastern 
m.arkets, especially as the condition of much of the road 
bed precluded the attainment of the speed of our fast 
freight trains. .If the neAv method refrigerative trans- 
port proves successful the Russian producer in remote 
portions of the Empire Avill be enabled to compete ad- 
vantageously, the A^ast potentialities of Siberia become 
known, and its fish, flesh and fowl, its vegetable and 
animal products, crowd the Avorld's channels of trade. 
Nevertheless, hoAvcA^er much the meat-producing ca- 
pacity oi the Empire be developed it cannot materially 
contribute to the world's ever increasing demand for the 
most stimulating form of bodily sustenance. Every- 
where the farmer treads upon the heels of the herder; 
everyAvhere the pastoral succumbs to the agricultural 
industry. Cheap land is the basis of cheao meat, and it 
is the steady absorption of the former that is the prime 
cause of the advancing price of the latter. Against the 
pending dearth of animal products but one alternative 
is open to the flesh e^ter§ of coming generations, ^nd that 
