FISHERIES OF ALASKA, 1908. 29 



the point of the hook comes a little below the bottom of the spoon. 

 Occasionally double or treble hooks are used. Some fishermen use 

 bait, and when this is done the herring, the bait almost universally 

 employed, is so hooked through the body as, when placed in the 

 water, to stretch out almost straight and face forward as in life. 



When the kings begin to school preparatory to ascending the 

 rivers to spawn, they are then taken by means of gill nets. A few 

 traps were placed in the water early in May this year in order to 

 catch kings, but they were all failures, owing doubtless to the fact 

 that at this season the kings are feeding and consequently do not 

 school. 



Gill nets are usually drifted back and forth with the tide, but in 

 Dry Strait, near WrangeU, into which the Stikine Hiver debouches, a 

 different method is employed. Here the strait, except in certain 

 narrow channels and pools called ''sloughs," becomes absolutely bare 

 at low tide. As the tide is ebbing the kings, wliich remain in the 

 strait for some time before entering the river, slowly drift backward 

 down with it. The king is a wary fish, however, and always resists 

 the current to a certain extent. Were a gill net drifted with the tide 

 but few kmgs would be meshed in it unless frightened, as their 

 resistance to the tide would hold them at about the same distance 

 from the moving net at all stages of the journey. To overcome this, 

 the gill netters either anchor their nets or else use stakes to hold 

 them. When stakes are employed a double row, about 8 feet apart, 

 is used. The net is not attached to these stakes, but at about half 

 ebb the net is paid out from the boat a short distance above the 

 rows of stakes and is allowed to drift down and lodge against them- 

 As soon as it is slack water the net is lifted and the fish removed. 

 The net can then be carried to the other side of the stakes and fished 

 with the flood tide. 



During the winter some kings are taken on halibut trawls set at 

 times in 30 and 40 fathoms of water in Ernest and Frederick sounds 

 and Chatham Strait, and these kings have halibut, rock cod, and 

 cod in their stomachs. At this season but little animal life is found 

 near the surface, hence the kings are compelled to go deep in order 

 to secure food. 



In southeast Alaska, during the early part of the year, the kings 

 were very erratic in their movements, due possibly to their pursuit of 

 the herring, which latter species abandoned this year certahi old-time 

 resorts and sought new ones. The kings were not in very great 

 abundance at any time, however. There was a good run of spa^vning 

 fish in Cook Inlet, and in western Alaska, where the king is not much 

 sought after as yet, the run of spawning fish was about up to the 

 average, although the old fishermen say that the present runs do not 

 begin to compare with those of ten and twelve years ago. 



