Otter and
Mink

There is little room for doubt that our most valuable furbearing animals such as otter and mink are decreasing in numbers from year to year. Some further measure of protection will soon become necessary.

Beaver and
Marten

Beaver and marten are protected throughout the year. The beaver were almost extinct a few years ago, but are now re-appearing in small numbers in different parts of the Province.

Fox, Raccoon

and Muskrat

Animals which have hitherto been considered to some extent pests, have now become so valuable for their fur that demands are made in some quarters for their protection. Among them are the fox, raccoon and muskrat. In the case of some of them, at least, it would be advisable to protect them during the season of the year when the fur is of little value.

Domestication

There are several fox farms in the Province which have met with some measure of success, but statistics regarding them are not at present available. Some effort has been made to breed mink in captivity. Results as yet are uncertain.

Pests

There are no wolves in Nova Scotia. The most destructive carnivorous animals are bears and wild-cats. In most of the counties, bounties are paid for their destruction. Wild-cats are to some extent hunted with dogs and are also caught in wire snares and steel straps. The bears are taken chiefly with steel traps.

GAME FISHERIES OF QUEBEC

By E. T. D. CHAMBERS

Secretary-Treasurer of the North American Fish and Game Protective Association

The game and inland fish wealth of the province of Quebec is, after that of its forests, mines and water-powers, one of its most important natural assets. Nevertheless, the absence of any complete system of provincial statistics renders it difficult to arrive at its exact money value to the Province. There are some available figures, however, which facilitate an estimate. Thus in 1910, nearly eleven hundred non-resident anglers purchased licenses for fishing with rod and line in the Province. About two hundred of them were salmon fishermen, who paid $25 each for their licenses, whether fishing on the open salmon waters of the Province, or being lessees of government fishing rights, members of clubs holding such leases from the Province, or non-resident guests of clubs or of owners or lessees of salmon fishing rights. Nearly four hundred non-residents, not being lessees of provincial waters or members of incorporated clubs, paid $10 each for licenses to angle for other fish than salmon, while considerably more than five hundred non-resident anglers paid $5 each for licenses for similar fishing rights, the reduced cost of such licenses being due to the fact that the holders were lessees of Crown fishing rights or members of clubs. The total amount of government revenue from angling licenses was thus nearly $11,000, and leases of angling waters brought in $50,000

more.

This direct revenue from game fisheries is a very small fraction, however, of their actual money value to the Province. One American salmon fisherman told the writer that each of his fishing trips to the province of Quebec costs him over $4,000. Some salmon fishermen lease private waters, and when, in addition to what they pay for their fishing rights, they pay for their travelling expenses in Canada, their hotel bills, guides, canoes, camps and equipments, supplies, etc., $500 each is a reasonable estimate, and often it amounts to many times that sum. At least two hundred non-resident salmon fishermen must have angled in Quebec waters last year, representing a total expenditure of $100,000. At least a thousand non-resident anglers fish in the province of Quebec for ouananiche, trout, bass, muskallunge, and other fish, and it is well within the mark to place their average expenditure in the province at $100 each. This adds $100,000 to the money value of Quebec's inland game fisheries, making a total of $200,000.

There are, however, indications of depletion.

A former Minister

of Colonization, Mines and Fisheries declared in the Provincial Assembly in 1906, "that for forty miles around Montreal the game has almost completely disappeared, and that our rivers and streams do not offer more than a quarter of the fish which we were able to take ten years ago,' and further "that the fishing has diminished in a surprising manner in lake St. Peter, lake St. Louis, lake St. Francis and the lake of Two Mountains, as well as in the upper part of the St. Lawrence, in the Ottawa, the river Jesus and the river des Prairies." There is now only one of the many tributaries of the St. Lawrence in either Ontario or Quebec, west of the city of Quebec, that a salmon ever ascends. At one time in these tributaries, salmon were netted and speared in great numbers.

Notwithstanding the depletion which has occurred in some of Quebec's inland waters bordering on the great centres of population, the fact remains that the Province still possesses some of the richest and most varied game fisheries on this continent.

Salmon Rivers

Quebec's salmon rivers may be grouped in two divisions; those on the north shore of the river and gulf of St. Lawrence from the Saguenay to Labrador, and those of the Gaspe peninsula.

On the North Shore there is scarcely any salmon fishing worthy of the name west of the Saguenay, though in former times almost every important tributary of the St. Lawrence as far west as lake Ontario was a salmon river. A few salmon still ascend the Murray river, which flows into the St. Lawrence at Murray bay, and until a few years ago, when mill refuse polluted the stream, some were annually taken in the Grand river, a few miles below Ste. Anne de Beaupré. The ascent of the Jacques Cartier river, some thirty miles west of Quebec, is still effected by a few fish, and, if the Dominion regulations concerning the location and the mesh of salmon nets were properly enforced in the St. Lawrence, there is every reason to believe that so clean a stream as the Jacques Cartier would, in the course of a few years, become once more an excellent salmon river. The Grand river of Ste. Anne and other streams both east and west of Quebec could undoubtedly be re-stocked with advantage and success, provided the pollution of the water ceased, the fish were protected and proper fishways were constructed in all dams below the natural spawning grounds of the salmon.

The salmon rivers flowing into the Saguenay, and the best of the accessible streams emptying themselves into the St. Lawrence and Gulf from the Saguenay to the eastern limit of the Province are leased to private individuals and clubs, and these are all carefully preserved by the guardians of the lessees from the time that the fish commence to run into them early

in the spring, until after the close of the spawning season. The principal tributaries of the Saguenay are the Mars, the Eternity, the Shipshaw, the Chicoutimi and the Ste. Marguerite. The Eternity is a small and comparatively unimportant stream, though a certain number of salmon spawn in it every season. The Ste. Marguerite is the largest of the Saguenay rivers and quite a noted one for salmon. The salmon which are netted by the fishery officers of the Dominion near the mouth of the Saguenay, for supplying spawn to the Tadoussac hatchery are chiefly fish which are attempting the passage of the Saguenay to the Ste. Marguerite. These parent fish are of course liberated after being "stripped" at the end of the season. Complaints are made of the difficulty of protecting the Saguenay salmon from illegal capture by nets and spears, and it is evident that more efficient protection is required.

Eastward from the mouth of the Saguenay, one passes in succession the estuaries of a number of streams, including the Grand Bergeronnes, Petite Bergeronnes, Escoumains, Portneuf and Sault-au-Cochon, some of which formerly contained salmon. The Escoumains was, at one time, a good salmon river; but has been ruined by a dam built upon it and by the refuse from a mill. An old fisherman named Moreau claims that, in former years, he used to net seventy-five barrels of salmon a year in the river. Dr. Adamson and Colonel Alexander have written of the splendid sport which this river afforded fifty and more years ago. Some of the other rivers above referred to, such, for example, as the Sault-auCochon and the Manitou, contain no salmon because of natural obstructions where they empty into the sea. On others where there are a few miles, more or less, between the tide-way and these obstructions, natural or artificial, salmon are generally found. Belonging to this class are several rivers, some of them streams with good sized tributaries, notably the Outarde, the Manikuagan, the Pentecost and the Ste. Marguerite of the North Shore. The fact that salmon have been seen below the falls of all these rivers is satisfactory proof that, if they had the opportunity, they would ascend them. The beds of the upper portions of these rivers offer an immense area of undisturbed spawning grounds, and, considering that none of their lower falls are of exceptional height, there seems to be a loud call for the erection of suitable fishways to afford the fish an opportunity of going up higher. In Norway, where the conditions of the rivers are very similar to those of our own North Shore, fish ladders have been built at a moderate outlay on falls over fifty feet high.

Mr. Napoleon Comeau of Godbout, a reliable authority, has cited illustrations to show how a number of the smaller rivers on that coast could be improved and turned into good salmon streams, mainly by purchasing and then abolishing the netting privileges in the vicinity of their estuaries, and by a judicious planting of young fish.

Few rivers on the coast can compare with the Bersimis for salmon, either as to number or size. In 1860, the tract of country surrounding its lower waters was granted to the Montagnais Indians as a reserve, and these latter claim to be under no restrictions of any kind as to the fishing of the river. The Indians prefer the spear to any other method of taking the fish, though some are also secured in nets. During the first years of the reserve it was not uncommon for one canoe to bring in forty to fifty salmon as the result of a night's spearing. As the result of this destructive fishing, the production of the Bersimis salmon has fallen from an annual yield of about eighty thousand pounds to twenty thousand, the total value of which, to the Indians, for food and for sale at Bersimis, is estimated at one thousand dollars a year. Mr. Comeau, already quoted, claims that the supply of fish could be not only maintained but increased, and the river made to yield for the Indians double its present revenue, if the Indian Department would consent to a change of conditions to which Mr. Comeau declares the Indians are ready to agree. I quote on this from his Life and Sport on the North Shore, at page 365, as follows:

"There are some fine tributaries and two nice pools on the river that would rent for far more than the value of the fish that the Indians get out of the river. The Indians would consent to such an arrangement provided, of course, that the rental went to them, for I have made personal enquiries of them."

The Indian Department claims no jurisdiction, however, over the fishing, and the Government of the Province has recently leased it to Mr. Boswell of Quebec, who will not interfere with the fishing of the fortyeight Indian families on the reserve, so long as they confine themselves to fishing for their own food.

Of the many remaining salmon rivers on the North Shore, there are some, such as the Moisie and the St. John, that are very rich. Others, including the Godbout and the Trinity, though of smaller size, have been so carefully preserved that they are literally alive with fish during the open season. On one occasion 57 fish were caught in one day by a single rod on the Godbout, and three of the party, which fished the same river in 1908, had each over a hundred fish to his credit.

It has yielded some

The Moisie is well known for its large salmon. over forty pounds in weight, many, every season, over thirty pounds, and the entire catch usually shows an average of over eighteen pounds. Mr. Ivers W. Adams, the owner of the riparian rights, has purchased other claims to the fishing which were the property of the Provincial Government, including the bed of the river itself. The net fishery at the mouth of the Moisie is so important that the lessee pays $6,300 a year for it to the Provincial Government and, notwithstanding the enormous quantity of fish taken in the nets, the due observance of the federal fishery regulations effectually prevents any apparent diminution in the supply.