70 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



The fish that were running in the largest numbers are 

 called by the whalers "white fish," though they do not 

 resemble closely our commercial whitefish. The Eskimos 

 call them kaktat. The water was clear and the fish were 

 wary. They could not be netted in daytime unless there 

 was a heavy surf rolling in from the sea that muddied 

 up the water so they could not see the nets. 



As I remember them, the nets we used were about three 

 feet wide and about thirty feet long. Sometimes they 

 were set out by Eskimos in kayaks, but ordinarily we 

 used a long stick to shove them out. The Eskimos would 

 find a straight-grained log of driftwood on the beach. 

 This they would split and adze into rods each the full 

 length of the log and two or three inches in diameter. 

 They would then splice several of the rods together, end 

 on end, making a pole perhaps sixty and even a hundred 

 feet long and so weak that it could not stand its own 

 weight. If you picked it up by the middle the two ends 

 would remain on the ground, and if you raised the middle 

 high enough the rod would break. These rods were 

 dragged about the beach rope-fashion, and when we came 

 to places where nets were to be set we would slip upon 

 the tip of the pole a loop that was fast to one end of 

 the net and shove it out upon the surface of the water. 

 In that way the net was set so that the outer end was 

 perhaps sixty or seventy feet from the beach and the 

 near end thirty or forly feet away. 



The catch varied on different nights. When the run 

 was good, two or three men could be kept busy tending 

 two or three nets. You would pull in a net and find the 

 fish stuck in it almost as thick as they could be. There 

 was not a fish in every mesh, but a person seeing the 

 quivering mass pulled in would have said that there was. 



