New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th CenturyVarious
History
New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century
Various
Fish hatcheries -- New England; Fisheries -- New England; Salmon -- New England
In outline the procedure is to expose the flesh of animals in a
sheltered location during the day, and when well stocked with the spawn
of the flies to place it in boxes which are set away in the "fly house"
to develop; when fully grown the maggots are taken out and fed at once
to the fish. The materials used for the enticing of the flies and the
nourishment of the maggots have been various. Stale meat from the
markets has been perhaps the leading article, but we have also used
such parts of the butcher's offal and of the horse carcasses as were
not well adapted to chopping; fish, fresh dried or pickled; fish pomace
from herring-oil works, and any animal refuse that came to hand.
Fresh or slightly tainted meat has been used to greater extent than any
other material, and has proved itself equally good with any. Fresh fish
is very attractive to the flies, and when in just the proper condition
may be equally good with fresh meat, but some kinds of fish are too
oily, for instance, alewives and herring, and all sorts thus far tried
are apt to be too watery.
A very limited trial of fish dried without salt or smoke indicates that
it is, when free from oil, a very superior article; it has, of course,
to be moistened before using. Its preparation presents some
difficulties, but in winter it is easily effected by impaling the whole
fish on sticks and hanging them up, (after the manner of alewives or
herring in a smokehouse) under a roof where they will be protected from
rain without hindering the circulation of air; in this way we have
dried many flounders and other refuse fish from the smelt fisheries,
which are conducted with bag nets in the vicinity of Bucksport.
Doubtless a centrifugal drying machine might be successfully used for
this purpose in summer. Pickled alewives, freshened out in water, have
been found to answer fairly well, when other materials are lacking, at
least to give growth to maggots otherwise started. Fish pomace has not
thus far given satisfaction, but seems worthy of further trial.
It is commonly necessary to expose meat but a single day to obtain
sufficient fly spawn; the larvae are hatched and active the next day,
except in cool weather, and they attain their full growth in two or
three days. To separate them from the remnants of food and other debris
was at first a troublesome task. It is now effected as follows: the
meat bearing the fly spawn is placed on a layer of loose hay or straw
in a box which has a wire-cloth bottom, and which stands inside a
slightly larger box with a tight wooden bottom. When full grown the
maggots work their way down through the hay into the lower box, where
they are found nearly free from dirt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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