Fish Traps in 1900
In
1900, there were fifty fish traps that were owned and operated by Whatcom
County’s ten canneries. Some of those
fish traps took up to 20,000 fish at a catch.
The traps were placed across the path of a fish run. They caught the
salmon at the head of streams and rivers, as the salmon were on their way to
their spawning grounds upstream.
Fish
traps used nets as underwater fences to guide fish into a trap called a pot
from which the fish could not escape. Fish traps were huge
structures. It took a lot of effort to
build a fish trap. The fish traps were made by pounding a row of piles
(logs) from ten to fifteen feet apart, starting from shore and out to a depth
that was from 40 to 60 feet deep. The piles were driven into the seabed
diagonally to the incoming tide. The net was hung on these piles. The
net reached to the bottom and was held down with rocks.
The
netting and piles were called the lead because the fish were led nearer
and nearer the trap, which was called the pot. The pot was at the deep end of the lead.
Between the end of the lead and the pot
were four hearts. The hearts
were a series of piles with netting on them that was wider at the entrance and
became narrower as the fish swam further toward the pot. The first two hearts were thirty feet across
the opening, and the second pair of hearts was ten feet across the opening.
When the schools of fish enter the
lead, they follow it to deep water. Migrating salmon always swim forward. They
never turn around and go back the way they came. They are forced to turn toward
the mouth or tunnel of the pot by the hearts.
The fish were funneled through a small opening from the heart into the pot. This pot was a square bag made of web. It was 40 feet square and 40 feet deep, and was suspended on piles.
A
trap steamer came along pulling a flat scow. The trap steamer had a tall
boom with a great dip net called a brail. A
brail was a square of netting about ten by fourteen feet, operated by steam. The
flat scow was positioned alongside the fish trap’s spiller, and the trap
steamer was on the outside of the scow.
Then
the trap crew got into a small “pot scow” and went into the spiller. The men
loosened the netting on the inside edge of the spiller and pulled up. The
netting was then loosened on the outside and made fast to the outside scow. The
fish were confined to a very small pocket, between the inside scow and the
outside scow.
The trap steamer lowered the brail net into the
spiller. When the brail net was raised
it was filled with hundreds of fish
. The fish
were dumped into the outside flat scow. The brail was then lowered again until
the trap was empty and ready to be set again.
Eight
men were needed to man each fish trap. The fish trap crew consisted of the web
foreman, pile driver operator, and crew on the trap steamer, or
scow. The fishermen who worked at the fish traps were hired to work all
year long. The fish traps needed to be
repaired constantly. The wire and
cotton webbing used in the fish traps had to be replaced frequently. Even the
huge “piles” (log beams that were pounded into the seabed) had to be pulled out
and driven in again by the pile driver. The fish traps had to be rebuilt every
year.
The
cannery sent the trap scow out to the fish trap several times a week. After the
fish in the trap were emptied into the scow, the trap scow then hauled the fish
from the trap to the cannery.
At the cannery,
workers lifted the fish out of the scow, with a long wooden pole called a
picaroon. At one end of the picaroon was a curved hook that picked up the fish
and threw the fish onto a revolving wheel. The wheel automatically recorded the
number of fish that were taken off of the scow.
Internet
Links Showing Photos of Fish Traps
Photos shown and linked on this page were
taken at the Semiahmoo Museum.
Black and white photo of the brail net is
courtesy of the Whatcom Museum of
History and Art.
Diagrams created by Jan Frank.