ALASKA SALMON INVESTIGATIONS IN 1900. 
183 
and boat pullers receive 2 cents for each redtish and 10 cents for each king salmon 
per boat of two men, the fish being delivered and tallied at the cannery or to a tender 
of the cannery. During a good season they average as high as $75 per month. If 
during the fishing season a man is taken from his boat to do other work, he receives 
as wages an amount equal to the average share of that day. 
When the run is heavy and more fish are supplied than the cannery can use, the 
fishermen may be limited in their catch to 1,000 a day, but not under that amount. 
It is not rare, when redtish are plentiful, for industrious and expert netters, by work- 
ing early and late, to make two loads, or 2,400 fish, which nets $24 to each man in the 
boat. This season it was noticed at three places that limits of 1,000, 1,100, and 1,200 
redtish, respectively, were placed on the boats, and with the fh\st limit at one cannery 
it was necessary to take some men out of the boats to clean fish, the Chinese being- 
unable to keep up the supply for the machinery. These men, therefore, received 
$10 per day for butchering. 
Unless one has seen the bins of a large cannery in running order words can not 
fully convey an impression of the masses of fish used in a single day. A thousand 
salmon seems to the ordinary observer a large number, yet a single three-filler 
cannery will utilize each day 25,000, and this district, when running full, will pack 
each day 250,000 in its thirteen operating canneries. It is difficult to understand 
how it is possible to maintain the supply, although the run is immense. 
In Nushagak Bay, off Clark Point, on two occasions the fish were running so 
heavily that they were caught in the propeller of the launch of the Albatross , stopping 
the engines. 
THE RUNS AND CANNERY WORK. 
'Die season in Bristol Bay is short. Not only do the fish run a very limited time but 
good weather lasts but a few months, although the conditions are far more agreeable 
during the summer than over Bering Sea generally. There are many bright, sunny 
days, frequently quite warm, fewer gales and less ’fog-, but with September come the 
gales and cold. 
The cannery ships try to reach their destinations as soon as the ice will permit 
them to enter the bays, as there is only a short time after their arrival to make the 
necessary preparations before the runs begin. They expect to arrive not later than 
the middle of May, and to do this they must enter Bering Sea early, often encoun- 
tering much ice to the eastward, though the rivers may be mostly clear. Cannery 
steamers (tenders) sometimes reach their destinations in April, but frequently are 
obliged to lie outside or to haul into a mud slough at high water and lie ashore until 
the rivers have discharged the floating ice. 
Bristol Bay is essentially a redtish district, and while all other species occur they 
do not run in large numbers. They will be referred to under the cannery headings. 
When the vessels arrive in May there are no salmon in the streams, even for the 
cannery tables. The earliest arrivals are king salmon, which appear from June 6 to 
16, depending upon the river conditions. They are followed a few days later by the 
redtish which, about June 16 to 20, run in sufficient numbers to warrant operating 
the canneries for them. The king salmon run scatteringly throughout the season; 
but even on the Nushagak, the only Bristol Bay locality where a regular pack of this 
