Part 2

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.

Naturally fond of fishing and gunning, my Orvis rods, with full assortment of flies, all gear necessary for salt-water fishing, and my rifle and shot-gun, were my inseparable companions; and after days spent in explorations, sometimes of bays and sounds never before entered by white men, and in one case of a large bay forty miles deep by fifteen broad, existing where the latest charts showed solid land only, my evenings were spent poring over works on natural history, icthyology, and ornithology, and jotting down in my note-book descriptions of my finds. Such jolly times! One day a mineral lode, another great flocks of ptarmigan, another a bear, a mountain sheep, or some new fish—gave me something to dream of.

The Alexander Archipelago, of which Baranoff, Kruzoff, and Tchitagofi Islands are the principal, is separated from the coast by Chatham Strait, which, beginning at the southward as a continuation of Puget Sound reaches to above 60° north at Chilkhat; it is from three to ten miles wide, deep and steep, too, throughout, bordered on the coast side by high, heavily timbered, snow-clad mountains, and on the other by high wooded islands. On both sides, many of the ravines are occupied by immense glaciers, from which flow icy streams, the birthplace of salmon.

Running nearly east and west there are several straits and sounds connecting Chatham Strait with the Pacific Ocean, of which Peril Strait, Icy Strait, and Cross Sound, are the principal. These, too, are bordered, as is Chatham Straits, and are the homes of glaciers and glacial streams.

Many of these streams I have personally fished, and among those under my command were several with kindred tastes, and I became possessed of the results of their experience.

I have read all that I could find of works on Alaska, and since my return have naturally conversed much with every one whom I have met who had also an Alaskan episode in his life, and have collected testimony on the point at issue. One and all affirm that my experience has been theirs, and the most strenuous efforts with well selected flies have failed to record a single capture of trout or salmon. The first bit of evidence I collected is worth recording. When the news that the Yankees had purchased Alaska, and thus become owners of the land north as well as south of British Columbia, was communicated to the Scotch Admiral of the English squadron at Victoria, Vancouver’s Island, he ejaculated, “_Dom the country! let ’em have it; the blausted saumon won’t rise to a floi._” Such was our united experience and verdict.

Of course, as we caught no end of them (trout and salmon) there were baits which would seduce them, and these were, for the trout, salmon roe, and for the salmon, live herrings.

There was no poetry in our trout fishing, for compared with salmon roe in slippery, sticky, slimy chunks, fish worms are aesthetically dainty.

There are several little lakes and more streams in the vicinity of Sitka; some within reach for a day’s fishing, and some within an hour’s. The principal of these are _Piseco Lake_ and stream, back of and running through the town; _Indian River_ and pond, _Saw-Mill_ creek and lakes, from one to five miles to the eastward; the _Redoubt_ river, lake, and fall, seven miles to the southward; and a nameless lake and outlet on Kruzoff Island, the lake embedded in a deep valley, one side of which is formed by the foot-hills of Mount Edgecomb, a noble, eternally snow-clad extinct volcano. In all of these trout or salmon are abundant in the season; in some both, and in some are found species which do not exist in others.

At the “_Redoubt_” I believe that all varieties and species are found. The place is named from a huge dam winch the Russians built across the mouth of a deep and wide ravine, thus forming a large lake of the river which here empties into the sea. The dam is provided with a number of salmon gates and traps. From the first run to the last, every passing school leaves here its tribute, seduced by the proximity of the beautiful lake; which tribute, duly smoked or salted, is barrelled for the San Francisco market by a very “lone fisherman,” a Russian who for many years, without other companionship than his klootchman (Indian wife) and dogs, has devoted his life to the business.

If in this paper I make an occasional blunder, by transposition, or misapplication of the terms “specie” and “variety,” or fail on a scientific nomenclature, I beg that it will be remembered that my claim is not to be an authority on icthyology, when such names are necessary, but on Alaska fish, which get along very well with their English, Indian, or Russian names.

I find in my note-book memoranda of the capture of _bathymaster-signatus, chirus deccagramus, and even a cotlus-polycicantliocejrfialous_, but had not Professor Bean instructed me, I should have continued (and I believe I did) to call the first two after the fish they most resembled, viz., rock cod and sea bass; and of the last named I have lost and forgotten the description. But we can spare him; the salmon and trout will, I feel sure, furnish all the material needed, and I will confine myself to them.

THE SALMON.

Five species of salmon have been identified as found in Alaska; these are:

The Oncorhynchus Chouicha,

The Oncorhynchus Keta,

The Oncorhynchus Nerka,

The Oncorhynchus Kisutch,

The Oncorhynchus Garbosha.

I am indebted to Professor Bean for the above list. In it I recognize some familiar Russian names, and I will supplement the nomenclature. The “_Keta_” is the big hump-backed salmon of the Yukon, sometimes attaining a weight of sixty pounds; the _Nerha_ is also called by the Russians _Crassnarebia_, or red-fleshed; and the distinction is well made, for compared with it, the flesh of the other species seems to fade into pink; the “_Kisutch_” or “black throat” is so called on account of the intense blackness of the roof of the mouth and throat; the flesh is lighter red than the _Nerkas_, but more so than any other species, and as a table fish it excels all others, bringing twice the price at retail; the _Garbosha_ is the small hump-back, and strikingly resembles the “red fish” of Idaho. This is the only salmon that I am sure ascends any of the streams near Sitka, except at the Redoubt, where the _Kisutch_ and _Crassna-rebia_ are taken in late August and early September. The common name for the _garbosha_ is the “dog salmon,” and a more _hideous_ object than one of them as found swimming listlessly or dying in one of the pools, it is hard to conceive of. I find this note of description: “Aug. 26th.—In a shallow pool I saw a fish some two feet long, feebly struggling as though he were trying to push himself ashore. I picked him up and laid him on the grass. A sicker fish never continued to wag his tail; his skin was yellow, picked out with green and blue spots, from an inch to three in diameter; and one on his side was about an inch wide and six inches long, bleeding and raw as though gnawed by mice. One eye was gone, one gill cover eaten through, and every fin and the tail were but ragged bristles, all web between the rays having disappeared.”

The first run of the salmon is well worth description. About the middle of May, varying from year to year by a few days only, the inhabitants of dull, sleepy old Sitka experience a sensation, and are aroused from the lethargy in which they have existed through the long winter. The word spreads like wildfire, _the salmon are coming!_ Everybody rushes to the heights which furnish prospect, and strain their eyes for confirmation.

One of our sailors, musically inclined, paraphrased very neatly the old song, “_The Campbells are Coming!_ huzza! huzza!” and achieved fame by portraying the emotions nightly under the lee of the forecastle.

So good an outlook has been kept by the keen-eyed Indians, and the Creole boy in the belfry of the Greek church, that when first the glad tidings are announced, the fish are many miles away, and no signs of their advent visible to the unpracticed eye. Ear away to the southward, there hangs all winter a dense black bank, the accumulation of the constant uprising of vapor from the warm surface of the Kuro-siwo, or Japanese Gulf Stream, which washes the shores of this archipelago; condensed by the cold winds sweeping over the snow-clad mountains to the northward, it is swept by them, and piled up as far as the eye can reach, covering and hiding the southern horizon as with a pall.

Presently our glasses reveal bright flashes upon the face of this curtain; and soon, to the naked eye, it appears as though the whole horizon had been encircled with a coral reef, against which the dashing waves were being shattered into foamy breakers. The breakers advance, and soon among them we discern black, rapidly-moving forms, and here our previous nautical experience comes into play, and, “Holymither, d’ye mind the say pigs!” as shouted by Paddy Sullivan, the captain of the afterguard, explains most graphically the phenomenon.

The salmon _are_ coming, and with them, among, and after them, a host of porpoises; an army so great, that an attempt to estimate in numbers would be futile.

The Bay and Sound of Sitka are dotted with many beautiful, well-wooded islands; between them, the channels are deep and blue, and these are soon thronged by the fleeing salmon and their pursuers; the harbor is soon reached; but it does not prove one of safety, for although there are immense flats covered only at half to whole tide, where the salmon could, and the porpoises could not go, the former avoid them, and, clinging to the deep water, seek vainly the protection of our ship and boats, which do not deter the porpoises in the slightest degree. For two or three days, our eyes, and at night, our ears, tell us that the warfare, or rather massacre, is unceasing; then there comes an interval of several days, during which there are no salmon nor porpoises.

I had formed an idea, a wrong one, that the presence of salmon would be made manifest by the leaping of the fish; on the contrary, were we to judge by this sign alone, but very few had visited us.

The first school had hardly gotten fairly into the harbor, before I, with others, was in pursuit.

The cannery boats, and Indians, with their seines, and I with a trolling line and fly-rod.

A single fish apparently, was at intervals of perhaps a minute, leaping near a point. Indian Dick, one of my staff, excitedly pointed that way, and urged me to go. “_There! there! sawmo sugataheen_” (plenty). I was inclined to look elsewhere, or wait for a larger school; but Dick remonstrated, “_Man see one fish jump, sir, may be got thousand don’t jump, be under_.” And Dick was right; but a very small percentage leap from the water, of which I became more fully convinced when I went with Tom McCauley, head fisherman of the cannery, on seining trips, or rather on a seining trip, for the affair disgusted me; and, as with my experience of Spanish bull-fighting, one trial was enough. Imagine so many fish that _tons_ were the units used in estimating, penned up by the walls of the seines, into an enclosure, massed so solidly that five Indians, striking rapidly at random into the mass, with short-handled gaff hooks, at such rate that, upon one day’s fishing, this boat, manned by eight Indians and one white man, secured _thirteen tons_ of marketable fish. It was bloody, nasty butchery, and sickened me. Not a fish attempted to leap out of the net.

McCauley supplied me with some data, from his point of view.

“_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.

I saw one female that was just finishing spawning. She lay quiet, as though faint, for a couple of minutes, then began to topple slowly over on to her side, recovered herself, and then, as though suddenly startled from a deep sleep, darted forward, and thrust herself half of her length out of the water, upon a gravel bar, and continued to work her way until she was completely out of water, and there I left her to die.

A very large proportion of the fish were more or less bruised and discolored; and upon nearly all there extended over the belly a fungoid growth resembling rough yellow blotting paper.

The size of the fish was quite uniform, ranging from two feet to thirty inches.

But that I had seen the living spent fish in the bay, I could have readily believed the truth of the impression of many, that the act of spawning terminates the life of the salmon of the Pacific coast.

One more point on the salmon, and I will leave them.

Upon our first arrival, we all indulged very heartily upon them, and in two or three days, a new disease made its appearance among us. A number of us were seized with very severe gripes and cramps, and these lasted, in all cases, for several days, and in some for a much longer period, two of the men becoming so reduced that it was necessary to send them to hospital. The direct cause, our doctor ascertained, was the diet of salmon to which we had taken; and by regulating and reducing the consumption, the difficulties were checked.

In conclusion, I would say that I have made every effort that would naturally occur to a fisherman to take Alaska salmon with flies, of which I had good assortment, and never got a rise.

ALASKA TROUT.

I am indebted to Professor Tarleton II. Bean for a classification of the various trout, of which specimens had been duly bottled and labelled, during our stay in Alaska. I had fancied, from differences in the markings, that I had _five_ species at the least, but Bean ruthlessly cut the number down to three, viz.: