[Nets] (Kubra).—
The most important fishery at the rivers is carried on by means of gill-nets, set under the ice, and visited every few days. In these are taken large numbers of all three species of whitefish (Coregonus kenicotti, C. nelsoni, and C. laurettæ.) The collection contains three specimens of these nets, two of whalebone and one of sinew. No. 56754 [147], Fig. 275, is a typical whalebone net. It is long and shallow, 79 meshes long and 21 deep, made of fine strips of whalebone fastened together as in the whalebone fishing lines. Most of the whalebone is black, but a few light colored strips are intermixed at random. The length of the mesh is 3¼ inches, and the knot used in making them is the ordinary netting-knot. When not in use the net is rolled up into a compact ball and tied up with a bit of string. When set, this net is 21 feet 7 inches long and 3 feet 4 inches deep. The other whalebone net (No. 56753 [172], also from Utkiavwĭñ), is similar to this, but slightly larger, being 87 meshes (25 feet) long and 22 (3 feet 9 inches) deep. The length of mesh is 3½ inches. Fig. 276 (unit of web) is a net (No. 56752 [171] from the same village) of the same mesh and depth, but 284 meshes (60 feet) long and made of twisted sinew twine.
Fig. 276.—Mesh of sinew net.
I had no opportunity of seeing the method of setting these nets under the ice, but it is probably the same as that used in setting the seal nets. When in camp at Pernyû in the summer, the natives set these nets in the shoal water of Elson Bay, at right angles to the beach, with a stake at each end of the net. They are set by a man in a kayak, and in them are gilled considerable numbers of whitefish, two species of salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha and O. nerka) and an occasional trout (Salvelinus malma). They take these nets east with them on their summer expeditions, but we did not learn the method of using them at this season. Perhaps they are sometimes used for seining on the beach, as Thomas Simpson says that the Eskimo at Herschel Island (probably Kûñmûd´lĭñ) sold his party “some fine salmon trout, taken in a seine of whalebone, which they dragged ashore by means of several slender poles spliced together to a great length.”[391]
An Utkiavwĭñ native told us that he found trout (Salvelinus malma) so plentiful at or near the mouth of the Colville, in 1882, that he fed his dogs with them.
Fig. 277.—Fish trap.