From the great salmon of the Yukon, to the tiny fingerlings, which in innumerable quantities throng in the various creeks of Alaska, and are as ambitious to seize a single salmon egg as are their larger brethren to appropriate great masses of the same, however illy the bait may cover and disguise the hook which impales it, there is not, I am convinced, an Alaskan fish, which through any merit of its own, is entitled to an introduction to the angling fraternity through the medium of this volume, and to the companionship of the beautiful fac-similes of the flies, which in life they scorned.
From personal observation and collected information, I am prepared to accuse all of the salmon family which are found in Alaska, of the grave offence of utterly ignoring the fly, either as food or plaything, and of depending upon more gross and substantial resources.
They are odd fish, and require peculiar treatment both in catching and discussing. And it is to this cause alone that they are indebted for the honor of being made honorary members of the gallant band of game-fishes of which this volume treats.
I have selected them as the subject of my contribution, because a single glance at the array of well-known names of those who are to be my co-contributors, convinced me that if I wished to present any new, interesting, or valuable facts upon any icthyological subjects within my range, I would have to travel well out of the ordinary tracks, and go prospecting in some “far countree.”
This I have done, and I feel confident that I alone of the contributors have been forced by circumstances over which I had no control, into a situation where the obtaining of my notes became pleasure instead of toil.
The notes which will be woven into this paper are not all of them entirely new. Some have entered into a series of letters, which over the signature “Piseco” have appeared in the columns of the Forest and Stream, during 1879-80-81. Through the courtesy of the editor of that journal, I am permitted to again make use of them.
I have preferred a grave charge against the salmon and trout of Alaska; it is but just that I should explain the basis upon which it is founded, and endeavor to establish my claim to be somewhat of an authority on the subject.
From the middle of June, 1879, to the latter part of September, 1880, I, as the commander of the U. S. ship of war Jamestown, was stationed in the Territory of Alaska, with general instructions to restore and preserve order among the incongruous collections of Whites, Creoles, and Indians of which the inhabitants of that forsaken country was composed.
My command was moored in Sitka Harbor, but during the two summers and autumns of my sojourn, my duties called upon me to make frequent trips of from ten to two hundred miles, to various portions of the Territory.
These trips were made in small steamers which I hired, steam launches and boats of the ship, and Indian canoes, and in them I explored many of the straits and sounds which separate the islands of the Alexander Archipelago.