ALASKA FISHERY AND FUR-SEAL INDUSTRIES, 1920. 139 
camp on the shore just outside the mouth of the river, but the drying 
frames were scantily supplied with salmon when they were seen in 
the last week of July. Between the mouth of the pass and old Fort 
Hamilton no fishing stations were occupied, and the nets operated by 
the white trader at old Fort Hamilton were having no success. The 
general belief that Apoon Pass is of little importance as a fishway 
seemed wholly justified by observations. It has probably no greater 
=p than have some of the subsidiary channels through the 
elta. 
The lower Kwikpak and the Kawanak Passes, which together con- 
stitute the middle mouth, are the least known of the three main 
divisions of the river. No steamers traverse them and very few 
natives have their summer fishing camps along their banks. The 
Kawanak is a stream of large size and fair depth of water and the 
lower Kwikpak, although choked with sandbars, carries a consider- 
able current. 
This middle mouth was visited July 5 to 7, at a time when the 
Carlisle Packing Co., on request, was testing the run of salmon by 
setting nets in the lower Kawanak Channel. Two nets were set along 
the left bank and two others were set offshore along the edge of a 
bank. This test was made during a slack period in the run in the 
south mouth, when the king salmon especially were running in 
greatly reduced numbers and the chums were not coming in full 
force. During 14 hours’ fishing in the Kawanak Channel the four 
nets took 3 king salmon and 67 chums. In a second test of equal 
length the following day the showing was even less favorable. 
One native fishing camp, which obviously has been occupied for 
many years, is located on the upper point of the long island which 
separates the Kawanak and Kwipak channels, immediately below 
their first confiuence near the mouth. Four families were encamped 
at this place, and reported a favorable catch of king salmon during 
the preceding two weeks. The run had now slackened, they said, and 
the chums were just beginning to appear. They had found the 
season thus far very much better than the preceding year, when they 
had fished in the same locality. During the season of 1919 they had 
been unable to secure many more salmon than they had needed for 
their summer’s use. At the time the camp was visited they had caught 
enough king salmon to fill one rack and two smokehouses, and had 
made use of two short gill nets of their own make set in an eddy along 
the bank of the island. The nets were not more than 25 feet long. 
Later, when a fresh run had entered the south mouth, word was re- 
ceived that the native fishermen in the middle mouth were again 
making good catches. It seemed, therefore, that the runs in the two 
mouths were well synchronized, the fluctuations during different 
seasons and between different days of the same season, following 
each other closely. This was well shown in a test made in the middle 
mouth, on request, during the earlier part of the season, when king 
salmon were running abundantly in the south mouth. This test was 
made on June 25 and 26, and resulted in a satisfactory catch of king 
salmon, with very few chums. 
In view of the tests here indicated and observations at the fishing 
camp, it can not be said that the middle mouth lacks importance as a 
route for salmon. Yet it is considered to be very far indeed behind 
the south mouth in this respect. It is doubtful whether it equals In 
