358 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
Foster and Atkins (1868a, p. 29) reported that there was a complaint against 
Androscoggin fishermen. They wrote: 
It is said that at the mouth of a small stream, somewhere above Bay Bridge, where the 
smelts are accustomed to run in the spring to spawn, and where it has been the custom to dip 
them, for several years a seine has been used, and tons of them were taken out when nearly worth- 
less for food. Many were shipped to New York, and commanded a price that hardly paid for 
transportation. 
The present writer has knowledge of similar instances. In some localities smelts 
are known to congregate in suitable places, usually near or at the mouths of the 
streams, prior to ascending them when they become favorable. In Casco Bay there 
are several such localities. There the drag seine is used up to the very last day of 
the open season (March 31). In Freeport, on one occasion, as soon as the place was 
free from ice so that the seine could be hauled, one seiner got, in a single haul, a catch 
of smelts for which he realized $200. It has been customary to seine this place every 
year just before the spawning run should take place, and this has resulted in a di- 
minished run. This custom, together with the customary intensive and highly de- 
structive dip-net fishing in the fresh-water portion of the brook, could not but seri- 
ously affect the number of smelts in the region. Not only were great numbers of 
smelts prevented from ascending the stream, but those that did ascend were prevented 
from spawning. 
In all the reasons given for poor breeding seasons or scarcit} 7 of smelts fault seldom 
has been attributed to the dip net, but almost always the seine has been the object of 
attack. The seine has been accused of being one of the most destructive appliances 
used in the smelt fishery. 
This belief is one of the long standing. In a discussion of Mather’s paper on 
smelt culture (1885), Theodore Lyman, formerly one of the commissioners of fisheries 
of Massachusetts, said that a decline of the smelt fishery some 20 years before was 
supposed to have been due to the capture of the fish by means of nets stretched 
across brooks, which prevented the fish from ascending the stream. In an edition 
of “American Fishes,” by G. Brown Goode, which was revised by Theodore Gill and 
published about 1904, on page 506 a reference is made to the smelt fishery in Casco 
Bay. It says: 
In this locality twenty or thirty years ago and perhaps later, brush weirs were used to some 
extent during the fall. There was then a profitable fishery. At the present time there are but 
two or three weirs, which do a very small business. I know of several weirs that have been aban- 
doned as unprofitable, notwithstanding the cheapness of their construction. They have not paid, 
of late years, for the labor of erecting them and the time expended in tending them. The seine 
fishermen do better. These fishermen usually have a large boat or scow, which they can move from 
place to place, and fish the various arms of the bay, coves, and creeks. Some fishermen get a 
good many smelts on the beaches of some of the islands without going far from home. [Cf. W. 
C. Kendall.] 
If seine fishing is more destructive than other methods it must be because of 
some element not possessed by other methods. It is true that the drag seine forms 
one of the most intensive methods employed in the fishery in Maine, for it is a 
movable fishery and not restricted to a particular spot, as is the weir or pound net. 
In order to be caught the smelt is obliged to go to the weir, but the seine can go to 
the smelt. 
