214 | REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [26] 
Tron hooks similar to, but smaller than, those used for taking the fish 
out of the dories into the vessel, are used for fastening the fish upon the 
table. To the loop end of the hook a short rope, having a cross-piece 
of wood, is fastened. The fish is hooked in the small of the tail, and, 
being drawn up on the inclined table, is secured there, head downwards, 
by placing the rope in a notch cut in the top edge of the table, the cross- 
piece of wood preventing its slipping back. 
It will be remembered that the halibut is shaped somewhat like our 
common flounder, or flat fish. The backbone, with its spines lying in 
the same plane with the body, leaves, on each side, a thick layer of bone- 
less flesh. These layers, called jflitches, are what the men are after, 
After the flaps of the dorsal and ventral fins have been cut off close to 
the body, a cut, deep enough to reach the plane of the backbone and 
extending from the head to the tail, is made, about 2 inches from and 
parallel to the dorsal line of the body, followed by a similar cut from the 
gills to the tail, but on the ventral edge of the body. These two are 
then connected at the head by a cut parallel to a gill plate and at the 
tail end by a straight cross-cut. For the better handling of the flitch, a 
slit, large enough to admit the hand, is made at eachend. The flitch is 
then grasped at the posterior part with one hand, and, as it is raised by 
_this hand, is cut free from the backbone with the other. The fish is then 
turned over and the other flitch taken off in the same manner. 
The cuts made parallel to the dorsal and ventral edges of the body, 
being 2 inches or more from these, leave strips of flesh and fat attached 
to the inner bones of the fins, which, when pickled, bring a good price 
under the name of halibut fins. Accordingly, after the flitches, these 
strips are cut off and pickled. The rest of the fish, consisting of the 
bones, head, and viscera, is then thrown overboard and another one is 
placed on the table. 
After the flitches are cut from the fish, they are thrown into large tubs 
called flitching-tubs, to be there rinsed free from blood and dirt, pre- 
vious to being salted in the hold. It is one man’s duty to attend to the 
washing of the flitches and to the passing them below, while three men 
are salting. The hold is divided up by plank partitions into six large 
bins, three on a side, in some of which the salt is kept until used by the 
salting of the fish in the others. One man carefully places the flitches in 
layers, one above the other; a second man, with a scoop like the grocers 
use for flour and sugar, covers them with the salt, while a third shovels 
the salt within reach of the second. The Bunker Hill left Gloucester with 
270 hogsheads of salt, and out of this salted 9,000 fish, amounting to 
140,000 pounds of flitches, having used a little over nine-tenths of the 
whole quantity. This salt came from Cadiz, Spain, and cost $1.50 per 
hogshead, or $405 for the whole. 
10.—TABULAR VIEW OF SUMMER WORK. 
The following tables represent in a concise form the times of setting 
and hauling of the trawls, the number of fish caught at each haul, together 
