“About the middle of June, the fish are plentiful enough to start the cannery, and the season lasts from ten to twelve weeks” He has observed “Seven different kinds of salmon, all of which are good for canning and for the table; but two species which come latest are the most valuable, the flesh being very red and rich with oil” (Kisutch and Crassna Rebia); that “all of the salmon ‘dog’ more or less, and that the dogging begins immediately after they have attempted to enter the streams, not before August; that after this process has begun (and he discovered it in fish which, to my unexperienced eyes showed no signs of it) the value for canning was depreciated,” and all such he rejected, and gave to the flock of poor Indians, who, in their canoes, followed us to secure them. If McCauley’s ideas are correct, the Alaska salmon caught in salt water, should be superior to those of the Columbia River and elsewhere, caught in brackish water. During the season of 1879 there was packed at this cannery, 144,000 lbs. of fish; the largest catch of any one day was 30,000 lbs. (over 16 tons); the greatest quantity canned, 9,000 lbs.; the largest fish obtained, 51 lbs.; and the average weight 12 lbs. The cost of the fish can be estimated at less than one cent per pound. Just what “dogging” is, I don’t know. McCauley’s opinion, which was shared by many others familiar with the fishing, is that it is a sickness indicated by a change of form and color, produced by contact with fresh water, and that the most hideously hump-backed, hook-jawed, red and purple garbosha, was once a straight-backed, comely fish; which, if true, upsets some theories. All I know about it is, that previous to the advent of the garboshas, in August, no change of form and color is observable in any of the fish, none of which enter the streams. During August, at the same time and place in the creeks, there can be seen garbosha salmon in all stages of the transformation, and the change in form and color is coincident. Some are silvery and nearly straight; others tarnished, and with slight elevation of back; others red, with greater protuberance; and finally, some purple-red, with fully developed humps, which more than double their height above the median line; and these monsters the Indians like best, and say that they are better for smoking than any other.
Another idea which I had imbibed in regard to salmon, became greatly modified by my experience. I thought, and I believe many do, that the instinct which prompts the salmon to run in from the sea, is to reach, by the shortest route, the place of birth; and that they make a straight wake from the ocean to the mouth of their native creeks; and that while impelled by this instinct, they refrain altogether from food. In all of this, I think that I was mistaken; and that the fish which begin to swarm in Sitka Harbor in May, and continue coming and going for nearly three months before any enter the stream, are simply visitors, which, on their way north, are driven in to seek shelter from the porpoises and other enemies.
That they feed at this time, I have plenty of evidence. We caught small ones, on hand-lines baited with venison. Numbers were taken trolling, using any ordinary spoon. I had with me pickerel, bass, and lake trout spoons, of brass and silvery surface. All were successful, the silvery ones the most so.
And I had many good strikes upon spectabilis or salmon trout, of six to eight inches, spun on a gang and trolled. The Indians in Chatham Strait catch a great many upon hooks baited with live herring; these are attached to short lines, which are fastened to duckshaped wooden buoys, and allowed to float away from the canoe. I have myself been present at the capture of a number in this manner.
The Greek Priest, and companies of the least poor of the Creoles, own seine boats, which go out daily; and after every fair clay’s seining the sandy beach in front of Russian town presents a picturesque appearance, dotted as it is with heaps of from one to three tons of salmon, whose silvery sheen reflects the light of the bonfires, around which, knives in hand, squat all the old squaws and children, cleaning on shares. Nearly all of the fish taken by them are smoked for winter’s use.
Every glacial stream in Alaska is, in its season, full of salmon, alive and dead. One, which for want of a better, was given my name, and appears on the charts as Beardslee River, I will describe; for in it I saw, for the first time, that which had been described to me, but which I had doubted; a stream so crowded with fish that one could hardly wade it and not step on them; this and other as interesting sights fell to me that pleasant August day.
As we, in our little steamer, neared William Henry Bay, situated on the west side of Chatham Strait, and an indentation of Baranoff Island, we found ourselves in a pea-green sea, dotted here and there with the backs of garbosha salmon; the fish, which were of the few that had survived the crisis of reproduction, having drifted out of the hay, and with their huge humps projecting, were swimming aimlessly, and apparently blindly (for after anchoring, they would run against our boats, and directly into hands held out to catch them), in the brackish surface water; made so and given its peculiar color by the water of Beardslee River, which arising at the foot of a glacier, had been fed by rivulets from others on its course to the sea, and through its lower specific gravity, rested upon the salt water. These sick salmon were so plentiful that I thought that a large percentage had lived and escaped the danger, but upon landing at the mouth of the river, saw that I was mistaken. For several miles the river meanders through an alluvial flat, the moraine of receded glaciers. The moraine was covered with a thick growth of timothy and wild barley, some standing six feet in height; much more pressed flat by layers, three and four deep, of dead salmon, which had been left by the waters falling. Thousands of gulls and fish crows were feeding upon the eyes and entrails of these fish, and in the soft mud innumerable tracks of bears and other animals were interspersed with bodiless heads of salmon, showing that they, too, had attended the feast. I waded the river for over two miles, and the scene was always the same. That wade was one to be remembered. In advance of me generally, but checked at times by shoal water, there rushed a struggling and splashing mass of salmon, and when through the shoaling, or by turning a short corner, I got among them, progress was almost impossible; they were around me, under me, and once when, through stepping on one I fell, I fancy over me. All were headed up stream, and I presumed, ascending, until, while resting on a dry rock, I noticed that many, although headed up, were actually slowly drifting down stream.
In many pools that I passed, the gravel bottom was hollowed out into great wallows, from which, as I approached, crowds of salmon would dart; and I could see that the bottom was thickly covered with eggs, and feasting on them were numbers of immense salmon trout.
I saw frequently the act of spawning; and I saw once, a greedy trout rush at a female salmon, seize the exuding ova, and tear it away, and I thought that perhaps in some such rushes, lay the explanation of the wounds which so frequently are found on the female salmon’s belly after spawning.
At first, I thought there were two species of salmon in the creek; one unmistakably the hideous garboslia, the other a dark straight-backed fish; but upon examining quite a number of each variety which I had picked up, I found that all the hump-backed fish were males, and the others all females; that is, all that I examined; but as they were all spent fish, I could not be sure. I therefore shot quite a number of livelier ones, and found confirmation.