Jack the Young Canoeman: An Eastern Boy's Voyage in a Chinook Canoe

by George Bird Grinnell

Jack walked over to a sailor who stood leaning against the rail of the deck on which they were sitting, and who was looking over the water, and said to him: "Will you tell me, sir, what that Indian is doing in the canoe over there?"

The man turned his head and looked in the direction in which Jack was pointing, and said: "Yes, I can tell you what he is doing; he is fishing. Don't you see that every stroke he makes he is bringing up some herrings?"

"No, I don't see it, and I will be much obliged to you if you will describe to me how he is fishing."

"Of course I will," said the man. "You see his canoe is anchored there in that deep water, just this side of that point around which the tide runs strong. At this season of the year the herrings gather in big schools in that eddy there. Of course we don't know just how they lie, but they must be mighty thick together. That thing the Indian has in his hand is a pole about a dozen feet long, flattened on the sides, and maybe a couple of inches across in its widest part. The flattening makes the pole sort of oval shaped, if you should saw through it; and each of the narrow edges of the pole is studded with a row of sharp nails, about an inch or two apart. These nails are firmly driven into the wood and the points that stick out for about an inch are very sharp. The nails run for about one half the length of the pole. The Indian, sitting in his canoe and holding the upper part of the pole in his two hands, as you see, just as he would hold a paddle, sweeps the end of it, that has the nails in, through the water, using just the same motion that he does in paddling. The herrings down there are so thick that every time he passes the pole vertically through the water it strikes the bodies of three or four of the fish with force enough to drive the nails into them; and as the man continues the stroke they are pushed ahead of the pole. When the stroke is finished and the end of the pole brought out of the water, the fish are still sticking on the nails. Then, you will see, if you watch him, he brings the nailed end of the pole in over the canoe, taps the pole on the canoe, and the fish drop off into the bottom of the boat. Don't you see the white shiny specks on the pole every time he makes a stroke?"

"Yes," said Jack, "of course I see them, but that is a new way of fishing to me, and I never should have guessed what he was trying to do. I should think it would take a long time to get fish enough for a mess in that way."

"Don't you believe it," said the sailor; "one of those fellows may get a bushel or two of fish in two or three hours. Just you watch the pole as one brings it up and see how many fish he gets to a stroke, and then figure how many strokes he makes to a minute."

Jack watched for a few minutes and saw that at every sweep of the pole two or half a dozen fish were brought up and knocked loose so as to fall into the canoe, and he made up his mind that after all this was a quick and easy way of fishing.

In the meantime Hugh had strolled up and was listening to their talk, but without making any comment.

Presently Jack said to the sailor: "We are not near enough to make a very good guess at the size of those fish; how big are they?"