❖ SPORT FISHING ON 27 August ❖

On the Log this year we have been trap fishing with early San Juan county pioneers Henry Cayou and the Troxell family, we've been reefnet fishing with Charlie Chevalier at Stuart Island, with the Yansen brothers at Squaw Bay, with the natives at Lummi, we've been to Bristol with the bark BERLIN, sternwheeling on the Columbia River, we've learned of the crew in four feet of water in the hold of the REUCE. Here are some fishers who are in a few feet of water all for the fun of it.

GONE FISHING.

The Kings are coming home, the Kings are coming home.

A favorite spot on the Samish River, Skagit County, WA.
Click image to enlarge.

Near Edison, WA.
click image to enlarge.

Standing by, same time, same fishing spot.
All photos courtesy of  Lance Douglas,
Blakely Island, WA.
Thanks for these beautiful shots, Lance.

The Samish River is approximately 25 miles (40 km) long, in northwestern Washington in the United States. The river drains an area of 139 square miles (360 km) between the Skagit River basin on the south and the Nooksack River basin on the north. The Samish River originates on a low divide in Whatcom County, and its tributary, Friday Creek, originates in the hills south of Bellingham. The river continues its southwesterly flow through Skagit County and outlets into Samish Bay in Puget Sound.
      The Samish River supports a large variety of fish and is home to one of Washington's larger fall King Salmon runs. The Samish River has runs of five Salmon and three trout species including Spring/Winter Steelhead, Summer Sockeye, Fall Chinook/Chum/Coho, and year-round runs of Cutthroat, and Dolly Varden. Also documented are Pink Salmon which, while rare, do arrive in small numbers to spawn in the Samish.
      There are two fish hatcheries supporting the Samish River. One located in the upper Samish directly below the mouth of Friday Creek, and another several miles up Friday Creek. Both hatcheries raise Fall Chinook and can process over 10,000,000 salmon smolt a year, 5-20,000 of those returning 1–5 years later to spawn as adults.

Text from Wikipedia accessed 9 Sept. 2018

❖ FISH TRAPS ❖

A trap on a serene day
Postmarked 1925.

FISH TRAPS

"In the last few decades of the 1800s, many salmon canneries were being built in a tri-county area consisting of Whatcom, San Juan, and Skagit. By 1900 we had two of the largest salmon canneries in the world. These were Pacific American Fisheries (PAF), the largest located in Fairhaven, and Alaska Packers Association (APA) located in Blaine.

Pacific American Fisheries*
purchased Eliza Island,
Bellingham Bay, WA, in 1899.
They built a new cannery on-site without
fresh water on the island, so from
1900 to 1930 they changed plans
and operated a shipyard to build smaller vessels
& fishing equipment.
Marine ways & pile drivers in view.
From the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

P.A.F. Cannery
Fairhaven, Whatcom County, WA.
from the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society.©

P.A.F. painting crew.

There was a job for everyone 

as the author writes in the last paragraph.

Photo from the archives of 

the Saltwater People Historical Society© 

Alaska Packers Assoc.
Blaine, Whatcom County, WA.
Click image to enlarge.
From the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

A.P.A.
Point Roberts, Whatcom County, WA.
The pile driver is in view, left of center.
Click image to enlarge.
Photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

Other canneries, some of them quite large were being built in Anacortes and Friday Harbor.

Apex, Sanitary Fish, FIC
Canneries lined the waterfront of
Fidalgo Island, Skagit County, WA.

Manhattan Packing, 
On the other side of the Straits in Port Angeles,
Clallam County, WA.
Litho photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

      In order to supply these canneries a large number of salmon needed to be caught. The salmon certainly were available in large numbers. The solution was the use of salmon traps, commonly known as fish traps. Most of the traps were owned by the canneries, but there were a few independent owners. The traps were very efficient; the salmon in most cases came into the traps in large numbers. All the canneries had to do was take the fish out of the traps and into the cannery to be processed. The traps did, however, need a lot of material and equipment to put them in and take them out.

Trap fishers at work
Click image to enlarge

      The traps consisted of four parts: the lead, heart, pot, and the spiller. The lead was a line of piles driven about ten to fifteen feet apart in a straight line across the tidal stream that carried the salmon. On this line of piling, the wire was attached from high water to the bottom. These leads were designed to lead salmon into deeper water and into the heart. By law, they were limited to 2,500 feet in length. The heart was web hung on piling and led the salmon to a funnel-shaped tunnel about ten feet on the outside, to a much smaller one on the inside.
      This tunnel led into the pot where the salmon couldn’t find their way out. The pot was a huge bag hung on pilings about forty feet by forty feet and deep enough to hold up to 70,000 salmon. It was made out of heavy-duty cotton web heavily tarred. By law, the pot could not be over 65’ at low water. From the pot, the salmon were turned into the spiller, a bag much like the pot but smaller. It had a large apron-style brailer that was used to roll the salmon onto scows. The power for this brailer came from the trap tender. The men it took to brail the salmon usually came with tender or sometimes they stayed on the beach in shacks. Eight to ten men were needed. The trap tenders were more like tugs and usually had small fish holds because most of the fish went into scows for transport to the canneries.

Tender and scow 

Returning with salmon,

calm water, and a big crew.

Click image to enlarge.

Low res scan from an original photo

from the archives of 

the Saltwater People Historical Society.© 

      The equipment used to install the traps in the spring and take them out in the fall was extensive and expensive. They needed pile drivers, pile pullers, rigging, scows, web yards, sheds, and of course, tugboats and scows. The pile drivers used were usually with 80’ gins and three-ton drop hammers. They were all steam-powered. The high gins were needed because many of the piles they drove were very long. To drive in 65 feet you need a pile sometimes 100’ depending on penetration. Many of the pile drivers had sleeping and eating accommodations aboard, all the comforts of home along with bedbugs and other cooties.
      Once the pilings were in, the rigging scow took over to hang the wire and web. The pile pullers were only needed in the fall to extract all the piles driven and to store them. Many were stored along the outside beaches at San Juan Park, at Jakle’s Lagoon and also in Mitchell Bay. They were still there two decades after 1934. Friday Harbor Packing Co had a web house and a web yard on what is now called Web St. Here they tossed the web and built parts they needed to build the traps and to store them during the offseason.

"Fish traps on the west side
of San Juan Island"
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
As inscribed verso.
Photographer unknown.
Photo from the archives of 
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

      The most important thing to have a successful salmon trap was its location. They needed to be placed where large numbers of salmon passed by and where it was possible to build the traps. They needed shallow water shorelines that dropped off gradually. Shorelines that dropped sharply in water 65’ were out of the question. It so happened that the Salmon Bank at the southeast end of San Juan Island was ideal. The bank runs one and one-half nautical miles south to a navigational buoy, from there it curves back towards shore, but at the same time continues westward to Eagle Point.
      Friday Harbor Packing had traps in this area along with the giants mentioned earlier, PAF and APA and others as well. There was a trap west of Eagle Point at False Bay. This trap belonged to independent operator Henry Cayou. This trap was a big producer of King salmon. Henry had a Salish mother and had that I ate understanding of the characteristics and movement of salmon. This made him a great fisherman. He was also a wise businessman and an all-around fine gentleman. He had other traps in other locations as well.
      One further up Haro Strait at Deadman’s Bay, and another one at Mitchell Bay owned by Cayou and Haroldson. There was also a trap at Battleship Island that was put in by an Anacortes outfit, probably Lowman’s Coastal Fish Co. The tidal currents were so strong there it was very difficult to install or to keep in place. It was a big disappointment because it mostly caught Humpbacks. The canneries at that time didn’t keep this species. Next in line was a trap at John’s Island, owner unknown to this writer. There were many more traps in the area, too many to list here. The traps mentioned were typical of them all and were close to home for the people living on San Juan Is.

Trap watchman's shack .
Low res scan of an original photo,
pre-1912, from the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

      These were exciting times with men taking big risks to get in on the action. A few of these men who should be mentioned were the fish pirates that wanted to dip into the spiller and dip in they did. Each trap had a watchman who stayed in a little shack right on the trap in most cases. He was to watch out for predators and junk getting fouled in the tunnel. Some of the predators were very tough characters. They didn’t want to hurt anyone, they just wanted some fish. Men like Spider Jones offered bribes of money to watchmen so they would just turn their heads. Some others like “Dirty” Dick, were more threatening, as in bodily harm. Still, others had made their deals with higher-ups in the company and were expected by the watchmen. It was rumored that one of the last-mentioned men went on to be a big processor himself in Alaska in later years.

The fish tender NEREID
O.N. 209491
Her Master's Carpenter Certificate
listed her built by Albert Jensen, Friday Harbor,
for himself, 14 Dec. 1911.
The same year he sold her to Friday Harbor Packing Co,
where she is moored in the undated photo.
The mariners are Earl Fowler (L) who
was an engineer on board in 1923 along with his
lifelong friend, George Stillman, both of pioneer
families of Shaw Island, SJC.
John Mathisen, who emigrated from Norway and
trap fished for his first employment in this country,
and Art Hoffman both from Shaw Island,
were captain and engineer of the NEREID in her fish
buying days in the county.
NEREID had lots of other crew over the years.
Bottom photo courtesy of the Fowler family.

       

These were exciting times alright, there were fortunes to be made and fortunes being lost. Everyone had an opportunity to have a job in a great industry. It lasted through the turn of the century, through the “Roaring Twenties” and into the first few years of the “Great Depression.” This was a period of about 45 years. The end came for the fish traps in 1934. By an act of the WA State legislature, the traps were outlawed and could no longer be used. There were several reasons for their actions, but two of them were that the State could not regulate them well enough for conservation. And the purse seiners who had become a big industry themselves complained that the traps were unfair to them because they were taking most of the fish and were a monopoly. Some of the canneries couldn’t survive the loss of the traps, but many others had good fleets of fishing boats and were able to go on."

Above text by John Wade. 4 November 2010.

The Fishermen and the Fisheries of the San Juan Islands with Terry Jackson and Wally Botsford.
The 20 images paired with the text are from the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society.
* More in-depth history of Pacific American Fisheries can be seen on this State Archives site. Scroll down to "History Note."

❖ Early Fishing Harbor of Richardson, Lopez Island ❖ with Beryl Troxell Mason

Looking down the hill to Richardson on the
 coast of Lopez Island.
Photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

“One should not leave the decade of 1910-1920 without investigating the role of the Richardson store in the life of Lopez. Norman Hodgson had been the storekeeper and postmaster and dock owner for what seemed to me then a long time, since before my birth. He stocked staple goods, hardware, and yard goods. He had candy and cookies in glass-fronted bins near the entrance. His office and the post office were in the rear of the building that sat above the road on the top of the rock.
 

The Hodgson-Graham Store
Richardson, Lopez Island, WA.
L-R: Bertha Benson, hired staff,
Norman Hodgson, Jr, and Lottie Hodgson. 
Click image to enlarge.
C. 1908 original photo from the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

      The front porch was high enough above the road so that one could step out of the wagon or buggy onto the porch. He even sold meat upon occasion: pork that had been slaughtered just down the hill beyond the store. I can still hear the squealing of the stuck pig that led this curious child beyond the store in time towards while a tremendous hog was scalded in a huge steaming vat with a roaring fire below it. Then the hog was hoisted from the vat and edged onto a platform where men worked with brushes to de-hair the hide.
      Along about 1915 or 1916 Norman Hodgson, then also the County Road Commissioner for Lopez Island and a farmer, sold the Richardson store-dock-post office to a partnership of Crawford and Lundy from Seattle.

The Richardson dock was the most southerly situated 
  port in the San Juan Archipelago & usually 
 the first stop for vessels coming north from Seattle.
The steamer MOHAWK (ex-ISLANDER),
built on San Juan Island,
 is in the center photo and the faithful steamer 
 ROSALIE is alongside in the bottom photo.
 Original photos from the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

       Besides the food, hardware, and freight dock at Richardson another need became obvious and Standard Oil put in a huge gas tank to service the commercial fleet. The purse seiner fleet was immense. 

Standard Oil fuel tanks and
Richardson Store, Lopez Island, WA.
Click image to enlarge.
Photo of the store on pilings is dated 1958 
from the archive of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

Not only couldn’t you count the seine boats fishing on the Salmon Banks in the Straits south of Lopez and along West Beach on the Whidbey shore, but when night fell these boats had to tie-up somewhere: as many 275 boats would stay at Richardson overnight. Mackaye Harbor was full too. 

These original photos depict Salmon Banks and
Hidden Inlet Canneries and some of the vessels
that fished for salmon in the area.
Some of the legible names of vessels––
Buffalo, Elsie, Glacier, Hennie, Salmo, Superior,
Supreme and Viking.
Click to enlarge.
From the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society

There were nine men to a boat, each boat stayed out five days, going home to Bellingham, Everett, Anacortes, or Gig Harbor during the Friday four PM to Sunday at four PM closed season. Gig Harbor being such a long expensive run some of these didn’t go home during the closed season. There was more demand than there was supply in the Richardson store.

Camp life on shore for the fisherman during
the two days of the closed fishing season per week.
The clean, white canvas tents can be seen in
the center background of the bottom photo.
Click image to enlarge.
From the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

      In 1974 when we were at Richardson visiting friends, we found the old store had been moved down into an annex of the freight dock and the Lundy’s had an elegant view home up where the store had stood.
      A facet of our Lopez Island years was the celebration on August 12 of Mama’s birthday. The epic year must have been 1919. The KLATAWA gathered up celebrants from MacKaye Harbor and from Richardson Dock. We preceded by boat to Olga and from Olga we were to climb Mt. Constitution. Picnic baskets were not to be raided until we got to the top. We had a high old time and eventually, we all picnicked on top of the mountain."
Excerpt from:
John Franklin Troxell, Fish Trap Man 1891-1934. Mason, Beryl Troxell. Oak Harbor, Watmough Publishing. 1991. Beryl Troxell Mason (1907-1994)

1990: A favorite meeting place for one hundred years, the Richardson General Store, on the National Register of Historic Places was burned to the ground. It was owned by Ken and Sue Shaw. More of the sad day can be viewed HERE

❖ FISH CATCHER ❖

Henry Cayou
Deer Harbor, Orcas Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
A low res scan of an original gift from 
long time mariner, Cliff Thompson.
Thanks, Cliff.
Photographer unknown.
Click image to enlarge.

"The sun-leathered old fisherman pointed across the graveyard-calm waters of Lopez Island in the San Juans with a nut-brown hand as twisted as a piece of driftwood.
      The 84-year old French-Indian fisherman had been pulling salmon from these waters since 1878. Other veteran commercial fishermen who remember will tell you that 'Old Henry' can figure a salmon like no other man alive.
      The last of the pioneer breed of fishermen, Cayou has caught more than 5,000,000 salmon in his time. 
      'There isn't a fisherman alive who has caught as many fish as Cayou,' says Robert Schoettler, State Fisheries Director.
      'The way to catch fish is to figure out which current the salmon are working on. If you can do that, the rest is easy,' says Cayou.
      The genius of this wiry, muscular octogenarian for knowing which underwater highways the salmon travel has earned him more than $100,000,000 in his career. In 1928, his best year, he cleared more than $100,000 in a season of fishing. 
      'I don't know how much I've made altogether. Might be close to $2,000,000 if I figured it up.'
      As the salmon return to the spawning grounds with unerring instinct, so has Cayou. The name is French and means 'Well-rounded, worn pebble going downstream.' We returned to the place where he began fishing at the age of nine, at Flat Point on Lopez Island.
      He straddled a log on the beach watching his four-man reefnet crew work in the water a few yards away. Up the bay, purse seiners were strung out on the shimmering water like a string of white pearls.
      'Lord, I've seen some changes in my time. All this (he pointed across the uninhabited flatland) was an Indian fishing village. Out in that channel, the salmon used to run so thick you could walk across the water on their backs..."
      Cayou's father, Louis, he said, was a French hunter-trapper out of Kentucky. He hit this country in 1859 in the wake of the big gold rush in the Caribou, BC. By trade, Cayou Senior was a 'bull-puncher,' who dragged logs out of the forest with oxen. 
      'He was too late for the gold, so the Hudson's Bay Co boss at Victoria hired Dad and another fellow named Bradshaw to go into the San Juans and hunt deer to feed the crews.' Cayou said. 'They built a bark shack at Deer Harbor on Orcas Island. Later on, they branched out and went into the shingle business for the Hudson's Bay people.'
      At Deer Harbor, Louis Cayou met a supple Indian lass of fourteen and with the blessing of the chief of the friendly San Juan tribe, married her. Henry was the first child of this union, 4 August 1869, and was followed by six sisters and four brothers.[family records list his birth year as 1868.]
      Young Cayou virtually was born to fishing. His Uncle Pe Ell was the chief fisherman of the San Juan tribe and when Henry was nine years old, Pe Ell made him a full-time fisherman.
       In those days the San Juans were the chief fishing grounds, for the Indians of Western Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska with even the Bella Coolas coming down in their colorful 50-foot-long, 12-foot-wide red cedar canoe powered by 15 oarsmen.
      'Those were happy times, Cayou remembered. We were all friendly and when fishing was good at one tribe's spot, they invited the rest of us to fish it, too. If we knew where the fish were, we never kept it a secret like today.'
      The coming of the white man to Puget Sound produced a minor peaceful revolution among Indian fishermen. For centuries they and their ancestors had caught salmon to supply their immediate wants but now they found that the white man would pay him money for the salmon. We hauled 40,000 to 50,000 fish in one boat. Often we got two cents a fish. A price of six or seven cents was good.'
      From his mother's relatives, young Henry rapidly learned their ancient fishing secrets. Patience was the Indian fisherman's touchstone. He could sit silently for hours and never move until the fish swam into his nets.
      'The salmon is a smart critter, you make the slightest movement from the reefnets and a whole run of salmon will shift direction and get away from the nets in a flash.'
      From the first, Henry Cayou (who later served 27 years as a San Juan County Commissioner) demonstrated his qualities of leadership. When he was still in his teens, he signed a contract with Alaska Packers to supply salmon to their Point Roberts and Blaine canneries at six cents per head, an excellent price. He quickly prospered.
      Cayou was a pioneer in fish traps, a development that profoundly influenced salmon fishing before they were outlawed in WA and OR. 'In 1888, a fellow named Fredenberg came up from the Columbia and he drove the first trap in Puget Sound off Eagle Point.'
      In the industry, Cayou is recognized as the all-time master among fish trap setters.
      'As a kid, I learned from my Uncle Pe Ell how the salmon ran the currents and how they used the shoreline as a guide. I guess I had the knack for setting a trap just right in the currents so they would pay out.' 
      The old fisherman's uncanny ability for setting his traps right enabled him to make a modest fortune salvaging fishing sites that had been abandoned as 'worthless.'
      'Henry had a genius for smelling out the fish,' Duncan McMillin of Pacific American Fisheries once said.
      McMillin should know. Once he gave Henry the Mulligan trap off Point Roberts and told him he wouldn't catch a fish.' Cayou moved the trap around, fished it three years and netted $14,000 a year from it. Then he sold it to H.A. 'Bob' Welsh of the Bellingham Canning Co for $30,000. 
      "I've made an abandoned trap payout many times.' It's just a knack I had. Some fellows can figure horses or ballplayers. I can figure fish.'
      Cayou always remained an independent operator, never hooking up with one of the big companies. The fish pirates who used to raid the big outfits' traps never touched me. They knew I was small and left me alone.
      Like other pioneer operators, Cayou made it and lost it. 'Henry was great with the fish but he never had much of a head for money, an old crony remembered. 'He dropped $67,000 in a cannery enterprise at Deer Harbor when a fish run failed and he had to make good on payroll contracts. Later he lost ''another pile' at Dungeness when a storm shook loose a big boom of logs and smashed his traps.
      But Henry Cayou is not the kind of man who regrets. 'I've been pretty lucky. Plenty of times I've been knocked into the water and have been just glad enough to get out with a whole skin.'
      When Washington State abolished fish traps in 1934, Cayou moved to the Columbia, working out of St. Helens, OR. But the dams and civilization (and the traps themselves, he admits) had depleted the run and it wasn't like the old days when a man could catch 10,000 to 12,000 fish a day.
      After Oregon outlawed the traps a few years ago, Cayou returned to Lopez Island to spend the late fall of his life fishing the place of his boyhood. 'Commercial fishing isn't a business or a sport, it's a gamble. You have to outguess the fish to make it.'
Source: Joe Miller. Published by the Seattle Times November 1953.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

1905: Reportedly built for Henry Cayou, a fish tender, SALMONERO (201957) also known as "Sammy." She was 54.4' x 11.3' x 4.3' with 75 HP. Built at Tacoma. She was still documented in 1935. Source; Robin Paterson, Gig Harbor, WA.

SALMONERO
201957
Undated.
A donation from 
maritime historian J.R. Paterson

1907, 23 Nov: County Commissioner Henry Cayou was over to Friday Harbor in his fine new launch SKIDDOO built by Wm. H.F. Reed at Decatur. 32' x 8', 16 HP Frisco-Standard engine which will drive her at nearly 10 mph.
1909:  San Juan county commissioner H.T. Cayou expects to operate five traps during the coming fishing season, he has already let contracts for four of them. One will be located near Decatur, one trap off Long Island, at the south end of Lopez, and two just inside of Deception Pass. The fifth he expects to drive near Kellet Ledge. He has contracted his season's catch to the George & Barker Co., of Blaine." San Juan Islander 12 Feb. 1909.
1995: Notes from Ernie Thompson of Deer Harbor:
"As far as I know at this time, Uncle Henry had fish traps at West Beach, Orcas Island; Salmon Banks, San Juan Island, Port Townsend, Point Roberts, Lopez Island, and holdings in Alaska." 
Source: Files of the Saltwater People Log.

❖ SALMON TRAPS LED TO FISH PIRATES ❖

This collage of three postcards depicts the early trap fishing
of the northern corner of the State, 100 years ago.

Below text by author/historian Lucile McDonald 
Seattle Times, December 1961.

"In fishing parlance 30 years ago, 'night buyers' were less politely known in enforcement circles as 'fish pirates'.
       This occupation went out of fashion in 1934, when Washington banned salmon traps. (The ban does not extend to fishing by natives.) It is difficult to find anyone who remembers the excitement these nocturnal gentry were capable of fomenting.
      Stan Phillips, 73, of Seattle, who spent 30 years in the state fisheries patrol, carries scars in token of his encounters with them. Walter Scott of Bellingham knew the reverse side of the picture.
      Scott, now in his late 60s, considers the night-buyer period merely a part of his long experience as a commercial fisherman. In his early teens he worked catching dogfish, to be rendered into skid grease, and since then he has rarely been far from fishing boats, still occasionally taking out one for a Bellingham company.
      The fish traps these men remember were placed strategically along the route of migrating salmon, the mesh anchored to piling and forming a fence which led to a central enclosure. The heart of the trap was brailed, that is, emptied by a large dip net, every two or three days. The brail dumped the fish aboard cannery tenders. 
      Regulations required closure of traps 26 to 48 hours over weekends to allow escapement of fish. In this interval, watchmen sometimes operated the trap for their own benefit, leaving the apron, or gate,  open instead of closing it.
      Scott said the watchmen were poorly paid and easily tempted. A few were too honest to play along with the nighthawks. One he recalled had not gone ashore from his trap in weeks, though fish pirates had tried all sorts of persuasion. Finally, they convinced him that he was overdue for a visit at a barber shop. He went ashore for a day and a night, leaving a well-filled trap. On his return with the needed haircut he found the trap had been trimmed, too.
      Frequently the night boats worked in pairs, becoming so efficient they arranged with a tender regularly to pick up their catch. Four men with two craft were known to brail 1,200 sockeyes a night at $1 each. They used a contrivance of their own invention called a 'Swiftwater Bill', made of stout poles and netting. Scott remembered one night when he and his friends took 5,000 salmon from a trap.
      In early years a sloop was used because it was silent and would carry a large load. Motorboats were better for quick pick-ups and get-aways, but they had to be muffled with a 'sneezer'.
      When a trap watchman could not be induced to relax vigilance, the pirates used forceful methods. Scott spoke of a watchman who had the habit of patrolling the plank walk around the trap. On a dark night, pirates slipped in silently, struck the trap a blow with their boat and knocked the watchman into the spiller.
      'He had to be fished out, damp and disgusted, along with the salmon. After that he practiced safety first and spent more time in his shanty and less walking the planks.
      If you were in one of the pirate clans, you soon were known by a nickname--Owl Eye Joe, Sleepy Eye Charlie, Shifty Sam, Lefty Louie, and Nosey Herman were some of the monickers.'
      Herman earned his name through numerous fistic encounters which altered the shape of his nose.
      Scott said that pirating was defended by the men who engaged in it as not a serious misdemeanor, because how could one steal fish from those who did not own them. A cannery might install a trap, but until the fish were taken out of it and placed aboard a tender or impounded in some other way, the pirates reasoned the salmon were still at large and in their natural element.
      Fish pirates generally operated off Legoe Bay on Lummi Island north to Boundary Bay and south to the west shore of Whidbey Island. On rare occasions, Canadians in formidable gangs crossed the border and raided traps. Phillips told of visiting a well-lighted trap near Lummi Island and finding no one around. Officers observed that the door of the watchman's shanty was locked from the inside.... They ordered the occupants out. Three men emerged, hands in the air. They looked relieved when they saw the patrol officers. 
      'We thought you were a gang of Canadian fish pirates. Are we glad to see you! Those other guys would beat us up, throw us overboard and clean out the trap.'
      Planes were in use for fisheries patrol work before the traps were discontinued. Phillips said it was possible to see from the air whether a watchman had left a gate open.
      A certain trap tender rigged a jerk line to the apron, so that he could drop it swiftly if he saw persons approaching. During a weekend, he had gone peacefully to sleep while sipping whiskey and paid no attention to the sound of the amphibian plane overhead. The officers dropped down and paid him a visit, finding him snoozing, with the jerk line tied to one hand.
      Often a trap watchman, having turned his back to allow 'the boys' to take some company fish, became the victim himself of the outlaws, who would carry off his tools, clothing, and food along with the salmon.

Fish traps located in the Pacific NW.
Six images from the archives of S.P.H.S.©

     The pirates outdid past feats when several boats moved in one night, loosed the lines on a pile driver and a barge which had been working at a trap and towed them a few hundred yards away. The cook was asleep in his shack on the barge, unaware that his flour, sugar, canned goods, sides of bacon, and fresh meat were being stolen, and that the engineer's tool shed had been cleaned out. As a final touch, a thief reached under the cook's pillow and pulled out a new suit of underwear he had purchased in town 
that day.
      From the inception of the Washington Fisheries Patrol in 1889, its men were considered fair game for pirates and poachers. It was a rare enforcement officer who did not get dunked in the water sooner or later. A favorite device was to string a wire across a channel on a dark night and attract the attention of the patrolman. If he followed the pirates, as they hoped he would, the wire more than likely would sweep him overboard to icy water and give them free reign for the rest of the night.
      Finding water or sugar in the gasoline tank of a patrol boat was no surprise. One officer was barely away from his moorage at Bellingham on a tour of inspection when his craft started to fill. Pirates had put a hole through the stern transom, inserted a plug and tied it to a piling. When the boat drew away, out went the plug and the patrolman had to bail fast in order to get back to port.
      Few legitimate buyers asked where fish came from. Often they paid cash to the pirates for salmon just caught by their own company's equipment.
      One of the nighthawks discovered a way to get fish with a minimum of effort. He ran his boat beneath the Alaska Packers Co. wharf at Blaine, placing it below a loose plank. As fish were unloaded into a bin overhead, a certain portion of them slid through into the boat. The pirate then replaced the plank and when the coast was clear he would move over to the other side of the wharf and sell his load to the cannery."
Author note: This article is based on interviews and material gathered by Lester E. Banker, retired marine surveyor who possibly authored a book, Oceans of Fish.
McDonald writes of a manuscript Banker had ready for publication. Web admin checked with the WA. State Fisheries office in Seattle and they have no knowledge of a published or unpublished fisheries book by Mr. L. E. Banker.