Maurice Lubee’s Ground.  This lies outside of New Ledge (Platts Bank) 47 miles SSE. from the lightship at Portland.  Extending in an ENE. and WSW. direction, its boundaries are somewhat indefinite.  It is perhaps 8 miles long by 3 miles wide and has depths from 95 to 110 fathoms over a bottom consisting mostly of mud.

Cusk are plentiful here in the spring, with a few in the fall.  Cod are taken all the year around, the Spring school being the largest.  Hake are most numerous In the spring and fall months, and haddock are not common but are most numerous in winter.

Apparently the abundance of cod on this ground is due to the great quantity of shrimps and soft-shelled crabs found on the muddy bottom and on the rocks that compose this ground.  There seem to be many of these deep-water grounds between and about the shoaler grounds, as near Cashes, Fippenies, and Jeffreys, which apparently serve as fairways over which the schools of hake, cod, and cusk, move from Georges Bank into the Gulf of Maine in the spring of the year.

Harvey Blacks Ridge.  This is Se. 1/2 S. from the lightship off Portland, distant 42 miles, and Se. from New Ledge, distant 8 miles.  From Glovers Rock, off Small Point, Me. this ridge lies Se. by S. 1/2 S. 41 miles.  It extends in an ENE. and WSW. direction about 4 miles long by I mile wide.  Depths average 70 to 100 fathoms over a bottom of yellow clay and gravel.  Cod are taken here all the year.  Haddock are found in the deep water in the spring:  cusk all the year in deep water, together with hake in summer, also on the muddy bottom in deep water.  Pollock and other surface-schooling fish are found here in their proper season.

The Cod Ridge (formerly Outer Harris Ground).  This lies NE. from the Northeast Peak of New Ledge, distant 7 miles.  It extends in an ENE. and WSW. direction, the ground narrowing and the water deepening to the eastward, the shoal ground having 45 fathoms on a bottom of small pebbles and fine black gravel and sand, depths increasing in all other directions to 100 fathoms on the mud and sloping off somewhat steeply, especially on the southeast side, where the drop is very sharp.  The length of the ground is about 5 miles, the width 1 mile.  This is an all-the-year cod ground, the season of greatest abundance being from May 1 to November.  The haddock are usually In their greatest numbers here from January 1 to April.  Apparently no large number of cusk or hake are taken here on the ridge, perhaps because the water is not deep enough for the former, except for the small fish, which are of little value to the fishermen; and the ground is not muddy enough for the latter species.  Both species, however, are found about the edges in the deep water, the cusk on the sharpest, hardest part of the bottom (perhaps most common in February and March), the hake, as usual, on the muddy parts about it.