Dec. 19, 1903,1 
looked upon almost as prizes. There is but little poach- 
ing done on these streams, and the decrease in the size 
of the fish has probably been caused by overfishing, 
all these rivers being very accessible from Halifax. 
In Cape Breton there are several salmon rivers, the 
chief one being the Margaree. I wish that that mag- 
nificent stream could be restored to its old-time glory. 
Kvery angler who has cast the fly upon its waters will 
agree with me that it is an ideal salmon river, and 
such beauties as we used to take! I venture to say that 
the average weight was considerably over 10 pounds, 
and a 20 and even 30-pounder was far from rare. Now 
a lO-pound fish is the exception, and even 8-pounders 
are not very common. In fact, it is a \yonder that the 
fish is not extirpated, for the river is heavily netted 
at its mouth, and is poached most unmercifully. The 
natives net and spear the fish as fast as they come into 
the pools, and, if by chance, a salmon escapes one sea- 
son, he is in wonderful luck, but he never lives many 
years, and this notwithstanding there are several war- 
dens stationed on the river and one resides near one 
of the best upper pools where spearing is much in 
vogue. 
In this pool some very large fish have been taken, 
one weighing 38 pounds was pursued by the natives and 
was finally killed by a spear that was specially made 
to encompass his broad back.* I have conversed with a 
number of the natives, and find that they care nothing 
for the laws; all they want is to "corn down" a barrel 
or two of the delicious fish for winter use. 
In New Brunswick waters the average size of the 
fish has decreased very perceptibly. The salmon in the 
Nepisiquit now rarely exceed 10 pounds in weight, 
while formerly they often reached 18 to 20 pounds. I 
do not think that the river is overfished, but that it is 
poached I have no doubt, and the shore netting at 
its mouth is heavy. 
I have not fished the Miramichi River or its tribu- 
taries for a number of years, but I am told that the 
magnificent great fish, 20-pounders and over, are now 
rarely taken, and the number of fish grow smaller 
every year. 
This, may easily be attributed to poachers and heavy 
netting. I venture to assert that every pool from salt 
water up to the Big and Little Swogle rivers is poached 
almost every night in the season. I have seen the 
poachers at work from my tent at night, but was power- 
less to prevent them, and to one who is used to the 
signs of the woods, the rolls of partially consumed 
birch bark, which had been used as torches that are 
to be seen on every pool, tell a melancholy story. 
I have often wondered how a salmon ever got by 
them, but a few do every year. The gill netting at the 
shore off Newcastle and Chatham, is very heavy, as 
many as 400 or 500 fish going into the freezer as a day's 
catch. 
There are several smaller streams emptying into the 
Bale des Chaleurs, between the Miramichi and the 
Jacquet River, but I think they are not visited by salmon. 
The Jacquet is not a large river, none of its pools be- 
ing wider than can be covered by a long cast, but it is 
a fairly good salmon stream, and it abounds iii large 
and gamy sea trout. It has upward of twenty pools, 
which salmon visit, and it is an easy and satisfactory 
river to fish. I was for five j^ears one of three lessees 
who controlled it, and my memory teems with recollec- 
tions of the manjr pleasant outings I have enjoyed on 
it, with fly-rod, canoe and camera. 
I never killed a large salmon in any of its pools, 
but they were gamy in the highest degree. I had fished 
rhe river before my term as one of the lessees be- 
gan, and I had a good opportunity to observe the 
diminution in the size of the fish: from 8 to lo-pounders 
they gradually dropped down to 4 or 5, and they be- 
came scarce at that. 
This was not owing to overfishing with the rod, and 
probably but little poaching was ever done on it, but 
to the erection of a freezer near its mouth, with its at- 
tendant gill nets, which lined the shore on both sides, 
the decrease is wholly due. When the freezer was in 
active operation it often received as high as 150 fish in 
a day, the average being about 50. 
One may easily see what the eft'ect of such a drain 
on the numbers of the fish would have on the river. 
Connected with the freezer and operated by the same 
parties, was a lobster camiery. which, in its palmiest 
days, employed 30 hands as "crackers and packers." 
I watched the work done in this establishment with a 
good deal of interest, for I felt that it was in a fair way 
to exhaust the supply, for an immense number of traps 
were set, and every lobster, large and small, was 
boiled, and some of them were very small, indeed. 
The operations of this cannery furnished a good ob- 
ject lesson, showing that the crops of the sea may be 
exhausted as well as those of the land, for so clean a 
sweep of the crustaceans was made, the cannery was 
obliged to suspend operations in the fourth year of its 
existence, there were not enough lobsters obtainable 
to make it profitable to run the works. 
Apropos of lobsters, an interesting experience which 
I once had comes back to my memory. I used to, in 
the good old times, take an occasional outing on the 
Indian River, which empties into Margaret's Bay, about 
25 miles west of Halifax, N. S. In those days in the 
early sixties, it was a good salmon stream, the fish be- 
ing of good size and the pools being all easily get-at- 
able. 
When my day's sport was ended I passed a few hours 
on the verandah of the hotel, which was run by the 
Masons, who Avere well and favorably known to many 
of the angling fraternity, and often took horse and 
wagon for a drive down the delightful shore road along 
the bay. On one occasion we passed a lobster fisher- 
man, who had just come ashore with his catch. It is 
to be remembered that lobsters in those days were 
larger than they now are. 
T stopped the horse and inspected his catch, and ac- 
cepted as a present a couple of the handsomest speci- 
mens. 
I thought tkat our menu at the hotel would be varied 
satisfactorily hy the addition of lobsters occasionally. 
r'Witb Fly-Rod ap4 ^ft^^^i" p^ge tt. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
and bargained\ with the lobster catcher to bring to the 
house 25 cents\ worth twice a week. The next day, in 
the afternoon, a,s I was enjoying my after-dinner cigar 
on the veranda, I saw the man coming up the road with 
a horse and small open wagon; he stopped and backed 
the wagon up to the hotel steps and uncovered his 
load. "What have you there?" I asked. 
"These are your first lot of lobsters, sir," he re- 
plied. 
I gazed on the great green and black monsters for a 
moment in much astonishment, and then asked him if 
he meant that the lobsters were all mine. 
"Yes," he replied, "and more, sir, if you want." 
There were two or three bushels, and all for a quar- 
ter of a dollar. I told him that a half dozen would 
sumce, and he picked out a few that would make one 
stare nowadays; huge fellows they were, with great 
claws five or six inches in width and nine or ten inches 
in length ; it is needless to say that we reveled in lob- 
sters during the remainder of our stay there. I give 
this incident to show that lobsters as well as game fish 
have decreased in size and numbers. A quarter of a 
dollar would not pay for much of a lobster catch just 
now, even at Margaret's Bay. 
But to our muttons. 
Passing up the Bay Chaleur, there is no salmon river 
of any consequence until we reach the grand old Resti- 
gouche, which, with the Metapedia and Upsalquitch 
rivers, constitute, in my opinion, the most magnificent 
series of salmon waters in the world. I know of none 
to compare with them. And what noble fish used to 
accept the feathered lure in former days! 18 and 20- 
pouiaders were common, and 30-pound fish were by no 
means rare. 
It is true those monsters were not as gamy as a 15- 
pound fish usually is, but their strength and fighting 
endurance were sometliing wonderful. 
Now, I have had no opportunity to examine the 
records of the Metapedia Club, but I will wager a big 
apple they will show that the average weight of the 
salmon taken in the club's waters has steadily dimin- 
ished, and that a is-pound fish is as large as is usually 
taken. 
It takes a long time to build up a 30-pound salmon, 
and at the rate the fish are netted all along the bay at 
the mouth of the river, there will be a slim chance for 
any more fish of that size to be grown. 
I had an opportunity to inspect a large tank contain- 
ing a great number of salmon that the fishery officers 
were keeping in the river near Flatlands, in 1886, until 
the spawn would be ripe enough to take, and was aston- 
ished to find that they were almost wholly 10 or 12- 
pound fish, and they were regarded as very satisfac- 
tory big fish by the ofiicials. 
I asked if they got no 20 or 30-pound fish, such as 
were common in days of yore, and they replied that 
such large fish w^ere now (1886) rarely seen. 
Restigouche salmon have been noted the world over 
for their great size and strength, but "how are the 
mighty fallen." 
Along the northern or Quebec shore of Bay Chaleur 
and away out to Gaspe Bay (into which empty a num- 
ber of good streams) are several notable salmon rivers, 
the most important of them being the Grand Casca- 
pedia, one of the best salmon streams in America, if 
not in the world. It is a Governinent river, the fish- 
ing on it being mostly reserved, but occasionally an 
American has a chance to cast a fly on its waters, and 
Avonderful have been tlie catches they have made. 
Several of my friends have been among the favored 
ones, and the accounts they gave of the sport they had 
was most exhilarating, to say the least. 
T have before me a photograph taken about twenty 
years ago. of a catch of thirtj^-five salmon by four rods 
in three days, on this noble stream, which averaged a 
weight of 29I/2 pounds. 
This wonderful record is one to be remembered, 
though it had previously been equaled, I understand, but at 
the present time the average weight of the fish killed 
there is very much less than the above. 
Emptying into the St. Lawrence River, along its 
northern shore, are a number of splendid salmon 
streams, many of them being as fainiliar as household 
words to the readers of Forest and Stream, but the 
big fish that once ascended those rivers are now no 
more, 10 to 15-pound salmon being considered heavy 
weight fish. 
Now, the decrease in the size of the salmon has been 
constant in all the rivers I have named, it has extended 
throughout all the most important waters in the Do- 
minion. I do not blieve that anj^one who knows much 
of angling will attribute it to overfishing with the fly, 
for no matter how industriously the angler may strive, 
he does very little to diminish the number of the fish, 
he cannot, for the reason, that not one salmon in ten 
will come to his lure, but it is the gill nets on the bay 
shores and the seines and spears of the poachers that 
have done the Avork. 
The salmon, in going to their home rivers, move 
along the shore of the bays and other bodies of salt 
water into which those rivers empty, and the owners 
of gill and other nets improve every opportunity to 
spread their engines of destruction. One who has not 
witnessed the extent to which this netting is carried 
can have no conception of its magnitude. 
Of course, the demands of an ever-widening and 
exacting market seem to the netters to be sufficient 
excuse for their destructive work. "After us the De- 
luge," has been the motto in the New World, and 
whether it has been in the extirpation of the bison or 
the wild pigeon, the ^salmon and other game fishes, or 
the destruction of the noble forests, it has constantly 
been the shibboleth, the watchword for the reckless 
and improvident. 
In "With Fly Rod and Cam.era," nearly twenty years 
ago. I urged the necessity for government action in 
putting a greater limit on the work of the netters than 
has been enforced, and once more I make a plea that 
more strenuous efforts shall be made to further limit 
the net catch. If this is not done I can confidently pre- 
dict that the next generation of anglers will have to be 
satisfied with fish: smaller even than tije present re- 
due^ average Aveight, 
489 
Now, curiously enough, although the weight of the 
Atlantic salmon is less than it was thirty years ago, 
the weight of the so-called landlocked salmon, which 
are not exposed to the perils of gill nets, seines_ and 
weirs, has increased very much. In the early_ sixties I 
used to visit the Grand or Schoodic lakes_ in _ Maine 
on the New Brunswick border, above Calais, in pur- 
suit of the Avhite trout, as the landlocks were then 
called, and their average weight in those days was 
hardly a pound and a half. I suppose in the years I 
fished Grand Lake stream I took several hundred 
landlocks, and I do not remember of ever getting a 2- 
pound fish, and my experience was not different from 
that of others. Thaddeus Norris, in his "American 
Angler's" book, gives an account of catches made by 
certain parties as follows: 
In June, 1856, three rods, six days, 634, trout, 872 
pounds. 
In June, 1857, three rods, six days, 432 fish, 642 
pounds. 
In June, 1858, two rods, eight days, 510 fish, 725 
pounds. 
The average weight of these, therefore, was about 
the same or a trifle less, than that of the fish I killed 
a few years later. But, although anglers have been 
abundant, the fish, owing to wise protection, together 
with a better supply of food, have steadily increased in 
size and weight, as Avill be seen by the following state- 
ment by Mr. W. T. Buck, printed in "With Fly Rod 
and Camera." 
Compai'ison of records shows a gradual increase in 
size of the Schoodic salmon handled at the spawning 
season, and a marked increase in the yield of eggs per 
fish, thus: Two hundred and thirty-five males weighed 
and measured in 1877, averaged 16.8 inches and weighed 
1.8 pounds; and 247 Aveighed and measured in 1886, 
averaged 20.3 inches and 3.46 pounds ; and 348 females 
Aveighed and measured in 1877, averaged 16.1 inches 
and 1.9 pounds; and 505 females Aveighed and meas- 
ured in 1886, averaged 20.1 inches and 3.58 pounds. 
I visited the hatchery on Grand Lake stream in Novem- 
ber, 1886, and saw the landlocks taken _ from the 
"corrals" or yards, and manipulated for their eggs and 
milt, and was simply astonished to see the little lyi- 
pound white trout that I used to catch transformed to 
3J^-pound salmon. NoAvadays a landlock of syi pounds 
is not regarded Avith Avonder, fish weighing 10, 12 and 
even 14 pounds being taken in the Maine lakes. 
Another species, not, however, usually regarded as 
a game fish, but one that is the most gamy that swini. 
the bluefish, has also fallen off very considerably in 
size Avithin the last twenty years; trollers could, in 
former days, count on an average Aveight of 10 or 12 
pounds. I have seen the time when I could stand on 
the beach near Sciasconsett, on Nantucket, and casting 
the artificial squid, or the eel-covered leaded hook far 
out into the surf, and hauling it in, hand over hand, 
bring in my 15-pounder at almost every cast, and so 
strong Avere those fish, it seemed sometimes as if it 
were a question as to whether I Avould land them or 
they would pull me into the ocean. Nowadays 5 and 6- 
pounders are very satisfactory fish. 
Aside from their value as an exceptionally gamy fish 
to the angler, who uses a stout rod, heavy salmon or 
bass reel, 100 yards of line and a piece of fine piano 
wire for a leader and hook baited vi^ith a strip of men- 
haden, squid or small fish, the decrease of the bluefish 
in size and numbers is not an unqualified misfortune, 
for they are terribly destructive of other valuable food 
fishes in the testimony given by different fishermen and 
printed in the report on the sea fisheries of the south 
coast of NcAv England for 1871 and 1872 by Professor 
Spencer F. Baird. It was stated that a single bluefish 
will destroy upAA'ard of 1,000 other fish, such as men- 
haden, mackerel, scup (or porgies) in a day; one fisher- 
man said that he had taken from the stomach of a 3^- 
pound bluefish upward of 50 young scup (porgies), and 
others stated that these saA^age destroyers will gorge 
themselves with mackerel, scup, etc., and then eject 
the contents of their stomachs and begin again. It is a 
great Avanderer, having been taken in almost every 
quarter of the globe, and its visits in great numbers in 
any giA'en locality are not ahvavs to be counted on. 
It is unquestionably to the angler a valuable species, 
for it puts up a savage and persistent fight, and is, 
Avithal, if cooked when freshly killed, a valuable table 
fish; but in consequence of its savage nature and pre- 
daceous habits, its diminution of size is not so great 
a calamity as is that of the other species I have named. 
Another of the angler's favorites — that magnificent 
game fish of the sea, the striped bass — ^has also de- 
teriorated in size and Aveight, 20, 25 and 30-pounders of 
bygone daj^s now being conspicuous by their absence; 
in fact, some of the localities in which they Avere form- 
erly abundant are now entirely abandoned by them. 
Professor George Brown Goode. in his Report on the 
Fisheries of the United States, mentions bass weigh- 
ing so pounds as often occurring in the Potomac, and 
states that one Aveighing 112 pounds is the record fish, 
but such fish as those were monsters; indeed, now, I 
have no doubt that the records of the Cuttyhunk, West 
Island and other bass fishing clubs will show that there 
has been a gradual but decided falling off in the Aveight 
of the fish that have been taken in recent years. In 
Professor Baird's report, above referred to, frequent 
mention is made of 20 and 25-pound fish, and the hand- 
line fishermen often spoke of filling their boats with a 
day's catch that Avas in Buzzard's Bay; in Vineyard 
Sound equally large fish Avere also taken, but a bass 
weighing over fifteen pounds in those localities is now 
a rarety. 
Further east, as for instance, Nahant, Thatcher's Isl- 
and and in other points near Cape Ann and in the 
Merrimack River, very large fish used to be killed. I 
have seen striped bass ranging as high as 30 pounds 
taken at Thatcher's Island; this is thirty years ago, but 
now the most industrious and persistent angler can 
only occasionally take an 8 or lo-pound fish. 
once saw a specimen that was exhibite<i in Quincy 
tnarket, Boston, Avhich Aveighed 45 pounds, and 30- 
pound fish frequently found their way into that market. 
On one occasion I saAv some v^y heavy bass killed 
\)Y the explosiori of dynarnite ij^ ^he Weymouth I^iver 
