CATCHING SALMON BY MACHINERY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVII, Issue 83, 28 November 1881, Page 1

CATCHING SALMON BY MACHINERY.

A new and very destructive fishing device ia reported from the Columbia Eiver, Oregon. It consists of a jetty of rocks builfc out from a point on the ahore of the river, outside of which is a plank sluiceway, in which an undershot wheel with large tank buckets revolves. According to the Scientific American, the luiceway was built when the river was at its lowest stage of water, and the wheel is hung so that it can be raised or lowered as may ba desired, according to stage of water. The instinct of the salmon is to run up the river alongside of the banks instead of mid-channel. By this the nVi can take advantage of the eddies below jutting points of land. On these projecting points the Indians have from time immemorial taken salmon in large numbers by using dip nets. The jetty built out from the point above-named makes a larger and longer slack water behind it, and the salmon rounding the point rush into the sluiceway to get up the river. In the sluiceway, the wheel which revolves in the current, is gauged so as to sweep within a foot of the bottom, and the salmon are scooped in the tanks or buckets, which latter let out the water as they ascend. On the wheel descending the fish are thrown out into a trough or gutter leading to a pen below, where they remain until taken away to be canned, The arrangement of the sluice, wheel. &c, is a moßt successful one, the catch of adult ealoion, which are the only ones canned, running from 1,500 to 4,000 per day. There is virtually no expense in taking the fish save attending to the pen. As the fishermen who take salmon ia boats in the Lower Columbia Kiver demand and receive from 50 to CO cents per fish from the canneries", one can readily see what a vast profit the use ot the wheel makes to the cannery connected with it, A fatal objection to this device arises from the fact that it scoops up and kills little fish as well as big ones, and as yet no provision ia made, in connection with it, for thp escape of $he for-

mer. Unless the threatened whole&alo killing of salmon too small for canning is prevented, the supply will be I entirely cut off, and the entire canning industry destroyed, if the wheel comes into general use.