More Data Trajectory

Census Bulletin No. 278, being the statistics of the fisheries of Maine, had just been issued. In the tabulated statement regarding river fisheries is given the following as the business of Penobscot Bay and its tributaries: The total number of persons employed is 406; value of apparatus and outfit, $27,016; total product for 1880 – pounds sold, 770,863; value, $40,514. In the salmon, shad and alewive fishery, 191 men are employed, with 217 weirs, 36 gill nets, 20 dip nets; the apparatus valued at $18,116. The product was – salmon, 9,208 pounds, value $19,752; shad, 800 fish, value $40; alewives, number used fresh, 18,000; smoked, 667,000; barrels salted, 17, value $4,823 – Total value of the three, $24,616. The smelt fishery employs 251 men, with 4 weirs, and 141 dip nets, valued at $8,750. The total product was 266,875 pounds, worth $14,579. The eel fishermen number 29, and use 4 traps and 25 spears, worth $150. They captured 9,000 pounds and sold them for $540. The products of the other river fisheries of our bay and its tributaries was: Bass, 1,000 pounds; worth $100; tom-cod, 177,000 pounds, worth $680.

Maine Mining and Industrial Journal, May 26, 1882, p. 329

(Total value of catch: $40,514 in 1880 dollars. That amount as income value in 2015 dollars: $10,900,000.

“I met the other day Messrs. Stilwell and Stanley, State Fish Commissioners, upon their return from a trip up the Penobscot River to see about some new fishways. At Great Works the old dam there was replaced last season with a new one built jointly by the Penobscot Chemical Fibre Company and W. T. Pearson & Co. The Commissioners have decided upon the location for the new fishway in this dam and it is now in process of building. The Commissioners also went up the Penobscot as far as Piscatiquis Falls, in the town of Enfield, where the Piscataquis Falls Pulp and, Paper Company have commenced operations on an extensive scale, the projected improvements including the construction of a dam 640 feet in length across the main Penobscot. The Commissioners were accompanied by H. H. Buck, C. E., and he will soon draw up plans for a fishway, the same to be submitted to the Commissioners and mill men for their approval. The general public may not be aware as to the number of fishways within the limits of the state. I am told by the Commissioners there are upwards of a hundred, thirty of them being quite important ones. The largest fishway in the state is on the Penobscot at this city. On the Kennebec there are two important ones, that at Augusta costing about $7000, and that at Waterville nearly as much. On the Androscoggin there are two large ones at Brunswick. There are four on the Saco River, several being between Saco and Biddeford and now at Bar Mills. The Maine river supposed with the largest number of fishways is the Presumpscot. This river in its comparatively short course from Sebago Lake to the sea has ten fishways, at least a half dozen of them being quite important ones. On the Mattawamkeag, a tributary of the Penobscot, there is a fishway at Kingman and at Gordon’s Falls there has also been one; the latter is now however out of repair and will not be rebuilt right away, there being talk among the log drivers on the Mattawamkeag of blasting the ledge and doing away with the falls. The other fishways in Eastern Maine are located at Vanceboro, Princeton and Dennysville. Those on the Dennys’ River are under local jurisdiction and the state authorities give no personal supervision to them. Along the coast, among the streams up which run the alewives, small fishways are quite numerous and Duck Trap Stream, Lincolnville, has seven of these.”

Maine Mining and Industrial Journal, August 31, 1888, p. 4.