FISHERIES OF LAKE ONTARIO. 
197 
The salting of salmon for trade and winter consumption was largely engaged in 
by farmers and others. On the Salmon Biver the fish were salted in the fall and 
many were peddled through the country during the winter. One barrel of salt salmon 
was then equivalent in value to two barrels of salt. Salmon were so plentiful that men 
hiring out to work stipulated that salmon should be given them to eat not more than 
three days in a week, and in binding out apprentices the same agreement was made. 
On the Salmon Biver the people who owned the land controlled the riparian priv 
ileges connected therewith. The owners often combined, and as much as 2 miles of 
shore were operated by some companies. 
During the spawning season, fishing was permitted only on every other night, 
and about half the run was thus allowed to pass up unmolested. Fishing at that time 
was principally with spears, 90 per cent of the fish being caught in that way. A few 
weirs were sometimes built, usually between an island and the mainland. When a 
school was seen adjacent to the weir, two or three boats were launched and the fish 
frightened or driven into the weir, which was often completely filled. There seems 
to have been considerable opposition to the use of weirs ; rival fishermen often tore 
out the weirs of their neighbors, and the existence of a weir intact was only secured 
by vigilance day and night; and even among those who operated weirs they were not 
very popular, as a great many small fish were sacrificed for which there was no use. 
After the fish began to grow scarce, the use of weirs was entirely discontinued. 
Mr. John S. Wilson, of Wilson, New York, at the mouth of Twelve-Mile Creek, 
reports that about twelve years ago two salmon weighing It pounds each were caught 
there, and none has since been seen ; at one time they were plentiful in that vicinity. 
They came to the shores in spring, ascended the creeks, spawned, and then went back 
to the deep water of the lake where they remained until the following spring and where 
they were sometimes taken in gill nets, although the principal means of capture was 
the spear, used when the fish were in the streams. In the fall there was another run 
in the creeks made up of fish that had not entered in the spring. 
Mr. W. E. Nelson, of Port Ontario, New York, writes that 40 or 50 years ago salmon 
were very numerous in the lake and in Salmon Biver. They were netted and speared 
in great numbers in the river. The fish were of good size, often weighing as much as 
40 pounds. Since that time they have gradually decreased, and the last of which he 
has heard were caught in the lake at Port Ontario about three years ago. They were 
small fish weighing only 2 or 3 pounds. He further states that, although there are 
dams in the Salmon Biver, near Pulaski, with proper fishways this river (which was 
in former days the most famous salmon stream flowing into Lake Ontario) would be 
accessible for a distance of over 12 miles from its mouth. 
Mr. Charles Learned, of Sandy Creek, Oswego County, who has been a fisherman 
for thirty years, writes as follows regarding the salmon in that vicinity : 
I have not seen a salmon in this part of the lake in about ten years. Twelve or fourteen years 
ago the salmon were quite plenty. I caught eleven in one day in a seine. Thirty years ago they were 
taken in trap nets. I never caught one that weighed more than 20 pounds. About fifteen or twenty 
years ago some young salmon were put in Salmon River, and the fish were quite numerous for three or 
four years. I think that Salmon River is suitable for salmon to run up to spawn. The conditions are 
as favorable as they were fifty years ago, and on some smaller streams more favorable, for the saw- 
mills have shut down and the dams are gone. On Salmon River it is 4 miles to Pulaski, where there 
are two dams ; on Little Sandy it is 5 miles^ to the first dam ; but the country is being cleared up so 
that there is not so much water as formerly in the streams in the latter part of the season. 
