salmon history

[sinker]

Just read a book about the history of the Long Beach Pen. and Ilwaco. It's called Coast Country, written by Lucille McDonald. I love these books on history of small NW towns.
It has a section on the salmon heydey in Ilwaco and Astoria back around the turn of the century. It talks of the wars between the gill netters and the fish trappers.
In 1900 the edito of the Chinook Observer wrote that "As long as salmon run and there are mouths to feed, the Columbia River Fisherman will have a mine of wealth far surpassing in intrinsic value any gold mine on earth."
The attitude towards the salmon then amazes me. It also talks about how many fish traps lined the shore of Sand Island and the main shore of the river. The horses used to pull seine nets in off of the sand bars in the middle of the river.
And ya wonder where the salmon went. They're runs had the h*ll knocked out of them long before any of us came on the scene.

[finclipped]

I read the book "Salmon witout Rivers." I think its hard for us to really see the reductions that have occured in the past 120 years or so, when we already were ****** the salmon long before any dams went in. The amount of fish that came out of the river was immense. After depleting the Spring Chinook, they moved to the Summer Chinook. After the summer chinook were gone, they moved to the fall chinook. After they were gone they moved on to the Coho. After they were gone, they moved on to Alaska rivers.

[Osprey]

Sinker
another book I read,a while back was titled,History of Shoalwater Bay (Willapa Harbor) by James G Swan,
it takes place in the late 1800's and deals alot with the life styles and such surounding the Cloumbia and other areas,interesting reading...Os

[sinker]

The really interesting part about these books is the way the residents looked at shipwrecks. They couldn't wait for another one, always wondering what goodies it would hold for them. images/icons/grin.gif

[Pete]

...as long as we're sharing good reads, you might keep your eyes out for a book published in 1946: "The Coming of the Pond Fishes" by Ben Hur Lampman. Ben was a writer for the Oregonian, a fisherman and an ardent outdoorsmah. His book is probably the single best source for information on where, how and when a wide variety of fishes were introduced to Oregon, including shad, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, crappy, catfish and striped bass. Very interesting history.