84 PACIFIC SALMON FISHERIES. 
A clear water distance of 600 yards laterally and 100 yards endwise 
must be maintained between all traps. At the present time there is 
no law regulating the length of leads, the maximum depth of water in 
which the pot may be driven, or the use or occupancy of the trap sites. 
It has been decided by the highest courts within the past year (1915) 
that title to the upland conveys no title to the trap owner who may be 
in front. The tide lands of Alaska are not of sufficient commercial 
importance as yet to enter mto this controversy. At the present 
time there is no tide-land law applicable to Alaska affecting the 
upland owners or the trap-site locators. 
At the present time it is probable the canner who is on the ground 
first and installs a working trap can assert his right to any unoccu- 
pied trap site regardless of who fished it the previous season, As a 
general rule, however, the canners respect the rights of rivals in the 
same fishing region, and a trap location once recognized as that of 
a certain individual or company is rarely jumped so long as the 
original locator cares to maintain a trap on it. 
Within the bounds of the forest reserve no land can be acquired 
except by lease, which may be secured from the United States for- 
estry agent, Ketchikan, Alaska. 
INDIAN TRAPS. 
The natives, especially in Alaska, have various ingenious methods 
of catching salmon. In the Bering Sea rivers they catch them by 
means of wickerwork traps, made somewhat after the general style 
of a fyke net. These are composed of a series of cylindrical and 
conical baskets, fittimg mto each other, with a small opening m the 
end connecting one with the other and the series terminating in a 
tube with a removable bottom, through which the captive fish are 
extracted. Some of the baskets are from 15 to 25 feet in length 
and are secured with stakes driven into the river bottom, while the 
leader, composed of square sections of wickerwork, is held in place 
by stakes. 
During the summer of 1910 the author found and destroyed an 
ingenious native trap set in Tamgas stream, Annette Island, south- 
east Alaska. This stream is a short and narrow one, draining a 
lake, about midway of which are a succession of cascades. In the 
narrowest part of the latter, and in the part up which the fish swim, 
a rack had been constructed of poles driven into the bottom and cov- 
ered with wire netting, so as almost wholly to prevent salmon from 
passing up. Just below, and running parallel to the rack and at 
right angles to the shore, was placed a box flume with a flaring 
mouth at the outer end. At the shore end the flume turned sharply 
at right angles and discharged into a square box with slat bottom 
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