THE MA CKEREL AND ITS ALLIES. 
181 
The mackerel fishery at the time of its highest developement, from 1820 
to 1870, was carried on almost exclusively by the use of little hooks with 
heavily weighted shanks, known as “mackerel jigs.”. For many years 
there were from six-hundred to nine-hundred vessels, chiefly from Cape 
Cod and northward, engaged in this fishery; and in the year 1831 the 
total amount of mackerel salted in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachu- 
settes was 450,000 barrels. 
The jig has now been almost entirely superseded by the purse-seine, and 
this radical change in the method of catching mackerel has caused the 
desertion, by the mackerel fleet, of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the 
practical futility—to benefit our fishermen—of the fishery clauses of the 
Treaty of Washington. All attempts, with very few exceptions, to use 
the purse-seine in the Gulf of St. Lawrence have been failures. 
The purse-seine has come into general use since 1850, and with its in¬ 
troduction the methods of the mackerel fishery have been totally 
revolutionized. The most extensive changes, however, have taken place 
since 1870, for it is only during the last ten years that the use of the 
purse-seine has been at all universal. As late as 1873 and 1874 a few ves¬ 
sels have fished with the old apparatus in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and 
also a few on the coast of New England. Such changes in the manner of 
fishing for mackerel have brought about also a change in the fishing 
grounds. Vessels fishing in the old style were most successful in the Gulf 
of St Lawrence, but the purse-seine can be used to very much better 
advantage along our own shores between Cape Hatteras and the Bay of 
Fundy. 
Considerable quantities of Mackerel are sometimes caught in gill-nets 
at various points along the New England coast from Vineyard Sound to 
Eastport. For the most part, however, they are taken west of Mount 
Desert. This fishery is carried on in two ways : The gill-nets may be 
anchored and left out over night, asfis the custom about Provincetown, 
or they may be set from a boat or vessel. The latter method is called 
“dragging;” the vessels are called “draggers,” or “ drag-boats,” and 
the fishermen “mackerel draggers.” The Mackerel gill-nets are 20 to 30 
fathoms long, 2*4 fathoms deep, with a mesh varying from 2 ^4 to 3 inches. 
In Provincetown harbor they are set in the following manner: 
Active and beautiful, strong, hungry and courageous, the Mackerel 
possesses all the attributes of a game fish, and were it not so abundant it 
