History of Fishing in Quebec: From the First Nations to the Zecs

Before anyone else: fishing by the First Nations

Long before Europeans arrived, fishing structured the year for Indigenous peoples of the St. Lawrence valley, the Côte-Nord and the Gaspé Peninsula. It was not a supplement: it was a food base, with its own seasons, places and techniques.

The methods were varied and effective: harpoons and spears, weirs and barriers of stone or poles set across rivers, nets, and night fishing by torchlight, where the light drew fish within reach. On Atlantic salmon rivers such as the Mitis, the Matane and the Gaspé rivers, the spring and summer runs supplied a massive seasonal resource.

The American eel played a role at least as important as salmon in the estuary: it was caught in quantity in autumn, during its downstream migration, and kept smoked or salted through winter. Lake trout, brook trout and sturgeon rounded out the picture depending on the region.

This subsistence fishery never disappeared. It is now recognised as a right and governed separately from sport fishing.

The 16th century: Bretons, Normans and Basques on the gulf

It was cod that brought Europe to North America, not the other way round. From the 1500s-1520s, European fishermen — Bretons and Normans first — crossed the North Atlantic to work the banks of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Basques followed in the 1540s, ten to twenty years later, and became the region's dominant players in the second half of the century.

The scale is surprising. In the second half of the 16th century, hundreds of ships and roughly 10,000 sailors worked the gulf every year. When Cartier "discovered" the St. Lawrence in 1534, he was sailing waters that were already busy: fishermen simply had no interest in publishing the location of their grounds.

These voyages created the first lasting contacts between Europeans and Indigenous peoples. Along the Côte-Nord, the Gaspé and the Magdalen Islands, iron tools, kettles and cloth were traded for furs and food. The fur trade, which would go on to dominate the economy of New France, began on the margins of the fishing stations.

Green cod, dry cod: two ways to get fish back to Europe

Without refrigeration, the whole problem was landing cod in Europe without losing it. Two methods coexisted, and they had very different consequences on the ground.

Green cod was heavily salted on board, at sea. The French preferred it: the ship stayed offshore, on the banks, and sailed home once the holds were full. Little or no shore installation.

Dry cod was gutted, lightly salted, then dried for weeks on graves — the cobble beaches where it was spread in the sun. This method required occupying the coast: stages, cabins, oil vats. It is what anchored Europeans on the Gaspé coast and produced the first seasonal, then permanent, settlements.

In other words: the way the fish was preserved drew the map of settlement.

Whaling: the other Basque industry

The Basques did not come only for cod. From the mid-16th century they set up whaling stations in the estuary and the gulf — the best known at Red Bay in Labrador, but also at Île aux Basques, Les Escoumins and around Tadoussac.

What they were after was whale oil, rendered on site in large ovens and shipped in barrels. It lit Europe, lubricated machinery, and went into soap and textiles. It was heavy industry, highly profitable, and the first large-scale processing activity ever carried out on Quebec soil.

Archaeological digs at these stations — roof tiles, ovens, barrel remains — are now among the best sources we have on daily life in the gulf in the 16th century.

New France: fishing as an economy

Under the French regime, fishing remained an export industry more than a local way of life. Cod from the Gaspé, the Magdalen Islands and the Côte-Nord went to Europe and the West Indies; fishing posts were granted, leased and fought over.

Salmon sold high: in an era when cod was abundant, it fetched the highest price by weight on consumer markets. It was salted and barrelled for shipping.

After the Conquest of 1759-1760, the great Anglo-Norman trading houses — Robin, Le Boutillier — took control of Gaspé cod and built a system in which the fisherman was paid in goods rather than money. That system lasted more than a century and left a deep mark on the Gaspé.

After the Conquest: the British invent sport fishing

This is where fishing stopped being only a trade.

Officers of the British army garrisoned in Quebec brought with them a practice already long established at home: fly fishing for salmon, associated for centuries with the most privileged classes of British society. They practised it on the rivers of the Gaspé, the Côte-Nord and the St. Lawrence valley.

Mind the chronology, which often gets compressed: the British were present from 1760, but sport fishing only really developed from the middle of the 19th century. That is when the practice stopped being a few officers' pastime and became an organised leisure activity, with guides, camps and soon clubs.

The age of private clubs: rivers under lease

In the late 19th century the government of Lower Canada adopted a consequential idea: leasing the salmon rivers to private interests — great fortunes and corporations, often American.

The first hunting and fishing clubs appeared in Quebec in the mid-1880s. The most prestigious, the Restigouche Salmon Club, was founded in 1880 by some forty New York financiers. The best rivers in eastern Canada became, in practice, private.

The system spread well beyond salmon. By the mid-1960s there were roughly 2,200 private clubs in Quebec with some 33,500 members, holding exclusive rights over vast tracts of public land. An ordinary Quebecer could not fish the best waters in their own region.

1977: the déclubbage and the birth of the zecs

On 22 December 1977, minister Yves Duhaime announced to the National Assembly the end of a century-old practice: private clubs lost their exclusive rights over public land.

The network of controlled harvesting zones — the zecs — was in place by the spring of 1978. Thirty-six associations were created in a single month, a record pace. Some called it déclubbage, others "the democratisation of hunting and fishing"; it was particularly badly received by clubs in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean and Mauricie.

It is by far the most important break in recent history. Today's fishing zones and zecs descend directly from it: public land, open access for a fee, resource management entrusted to user associations.

From 1978 to today

What followed was structure: wildlife reserves, regulated outfitters, species management plans, stocking, and a rulebook divided into 29 fishing zones, each with its own rules.

The result is measurable. In 2025-2026, 733,931 sport fishing licences were sold in Quebec — 689,567 to residents and 44,364 to non-residents. Fishing has become again what it was before the clubs: everyone's activity, on an immense territory.

To go further, it all starts with a fishing licence and your zone's regulations. And if you are starting out, our complete Quebec fishing guide takes it from here.