214 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 
mg is most common and is preferred for several reasons. It supplies 
the canneries with fish early in the day, and it is thought that salmon 
landed then are in better order than those taken by day, when the tem- 
perature is usually higher. 
In gill-net fishing on rivers it is necessary to work in a straight reach 
of water of fairly uniform depth and fvee from snags or sharp ledges. 
It has been aptly said that “a man can’t turn a corner with a gill net.” 
So a clear reach is selected, and this is called a “ drift.” In a river like 
the Columbia there are likely to be many drifts, and to each a special 
name is applied, such as “Brown’s Reach,” “Jones’s Drift,” etc. In 
setting the net the boat-puller rows slowly across the stream while the 
captain pays out the apparatus, to the first end of which a buoy and 
lantern have been attached. When about two thirds of the gear is out 
the boat is turned downstream nearly at right angles to her former 
course, so that the net, when set, approximates the shape of the letter L. 
The foregoing is given on the authority of the Alta California, in its 
issue of April 20, 1884, which also had the following additional allusion 
to gill-net fishing: 
The position of the net in the water is peculiar. The lead line is dragging on 
the bottom of the river, the cork line, impelled forward by the current, keeps every 
mesh taut and open. At first the boat corner was at right angles to the body of the 
net, but the lamp end being in the deep channel, where the current is stronger, 
moves downstream more rapidly than the boat end, and gradually the angle closes 
up and the lamp end is up and downstream in a diagonal line, which crosses, per- 
haps, two-thirds of the main channel. The man in the boat pulls leisurely along, 
just fast enough to keep the corner on the net all the time and prevent the net from 
standing straight up and down stream. As the net is now it presents a sloping wall 
almost, if not quite, imperceptible to the sight of the fish, and totally impassable 
unless Mister Salmon would do what many a good man has to do, back down and sur- 
round the obstacles he meets. But when the Almighty made the salmon he endowed it 
with a degree of obstinacy unparalleled in the animal kingdom. The persistent cour- 
age of the bulldog and the wild charge of the buffalo when stampeded is nothing 
compared to the unending rush of the salmon upstream when he makes his annual trip 
from the ocean to his favorite spawning ground. * * * When the foolish fish meets 
a gill net he may, perchance, be lucky enough to strike it sideways, and then he will 
go poking around for a time till he thinks he has the lay of the net, and finding that 
it runs in a diagonal line, he gives a flirt with his tail, crowds on all sail, and makes 
a vicious slantwise dive to make up for lost time. The instant he does this he is a 
doomed salmon. * * * His calculations were all right so far as the main body of 
the net was concerned, but the fool never stopped to calculate on the corner at the 
boat end, and so he dashes head foremost into the net, the fatal mesh slips over his head 
till it is past the gills, and each succeeding struggle only jams him tighter and tighter. 
When a fish is first “struck,” as the fishermen call it, * * * he will start upstream, 
towing all the slack of the net, and * * * it is no uncommon thing for a ten or twelve 
pound fish, when caught near the bottom of the net, to pick up the lead line and 
struggle to the surface. * * * The small fish fight harder than the larger ones. 
A huge 30-pounder will often roll into the net and stay there without making a move, 
but as a rule, when a fish strikes, the bobbing of the corks and the splashin^of the 
water tells the iqen in the boat that they have another captive. When the boat nears 
the end of the drift the corner end is let loose, and away they go as hard as they can 
pull to pick up the lamp end of the net. The first thing to be done is to draw up the 
