WASHINGTON STATE FISHERIES BOARD
HEARING
APRIL 28 1923
UNIV. OF WASH. LIB.HEARING.
BEECHE STATE FISHERIES BOARD.
APRIL 28, 1923.156639
INDEX
C.S. VAIL.............................	3-71-74-75-76
H. BJORKLUND....................................... 4-49
A.I.	DUNLAP........................................ 6
S.	"I.	WAY.............................................. 7
B.	R.	WATSON..................................... 8-88
E. HOGAN......................................... 34-65
E.	H.	ANDERSON....................... 51-66-70-63-84
0.	C.	NELSON......................... 69-71-72-76-77
1WASHINGTON STATE FISHERIES
BOARD
Hearing held at Seattle, Washington, in the office of the Board in the Alaska Building, at 11 A.M.
April 28, 1923,
PRESENT.
E. A. Sims, Chairman, H. Ramwell and Edward P. Blake, members of the Board.
There were also present:
C.	S. Vail, La Conner.
H. Bjorklund, East Stanwood.
A.	I. Dunlap, La Conner.
S. W. Way, Everett.
B.	R. Watson, Everett.
E* Hogan, Everett.
E. R. Anderson, La Conner.
C„ C. Nelson, Mt. Vernon*
Pursuant to notice, the Board was called to order hy Mr. E. A. Sims, Chairman; whereupon the following proceedings were had, to-wit:
2MR, SIMS:	Now,	Mr. Vail, please state to the Board what you are
here for.
MR. VAIL:	Well,	I	am	here	to	listen.	I	am	just	here	to	listen*
I expected that the Governor would he here to meet with us.
So	I don*t know as I have much to say at this time. Perhaps later on I might say something.
MR. SIMS:	That is all you have to say at this time?
MR. VAIL:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	What	is your name?
MR. BJORKLUHD:	Bjorklund.
MR. SIMS:	Where	are	you from Mr. Bjorklund?
MR. BJORKLUND:	Stanwood.
MR. SIMS:	Are	you a fisherman?
MR. BJQRKLUND:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	Did	you attend a meeting in Seattle any time before the
State Fisheries Board?
MR. 3 JORKLTOID:	Wha t ?
MR. SIMS:	Have you ever attended any other meeting of the State
Fisheries Board?
MR. BJORXLUND:	Yes sir, I have "been one meeting, some years ago,
up in Washington Hotel*
Q. The State Fisheries Board was not created at that time?
MR. BJORKLUND:	Ho.
MR. SIMS:	You	didn’t attend any meeting on June 20, 1921?
MR. BJORKLUHD:	No.
MR. SIMS:	Just	state to the Board what you have in mind?
MR. 3 JORIfLUliD:	Wha t ?
MR. SIMS:	Just tell us what you are here for.
MR. BJORKLUHD:	Yes, I am here for, I guess, what the rest of them
are here for, to get to hear that we have the right to fish, It is closed, the whole river, before, hut now there is a survey there.
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MR. SIMS:	A survey there — what do you mean "by a survey there?
That don't mean anything to us.
A Outside the limit, you know, outside of the river and -MR.	SIMS:	You	are	from	the Skagit River?
MR.	BJORXLUND:	No,	from	the Stilaguamish	River.
MR. SIMS:	Row	what	do	you want done on the Stilaguamish?
MR.	BJORKLUND:	We	want	to have open so	that	we can fish.
MR.	SIMS:	You	want the	river opened?
MR. BJORKLUND:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	The	Stilaguamish River?
MR. BJORKLUND:	No, not the whole river. This hasbeen limit be-
fore. Surveyed, you know.
MR. SIMS:	Where	was it surveyed before?
MR. BJORKLUND:	Mouth, right mouth of the river.
MR. SILTS:	There was no fishing inside of the Stilaguamish before?
MR. BJORKLUND:	No, -- yes, there was fishing before, before this,
but now they are fishing,	have been	fishing outside there.
MR.	SIMS:	You want to fish right	up to	the mouth of	the river	—
from the mouth of the river up?
MR. BJORKLUND:	Yes, where the line is drawed. to.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Where	is that?
MR. SIMS:	Where	is that line drawn?
MR. BJOHKLUND:	Drawn right at the mouth of the river.
MR. SIMS:	That	is the Stilaguamish coming in there (referring to
map) .
MR.	BJORKLUND:	I can't see.
MR.	SIMS:	This is Port Susan	and	that is Skagit Bay,	that red	mark
that you see there,
MR. BJORKLUND:	That is slough right there.
MR. SIMS:	That is the slough running into the Stilaguamish, that
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is the big slough running into the Stilaguamish.
MR- BJORKLUND:	Right	north of it, right north from the flat.
MR. SIMS:	Is	the	flat	in	Skagit	Bay	ar	at	Port Susan?
MR. BJOREXUND:	In	Port Susan.
MR. SIMS:	In Port Susan?
MR. BJORKLUIID:	Yes*	Port Susan Bay we are taling about now.
This is a stream go to Port Susan and one to Skagit. They lead out from the Stilaguamish River.
MR. SIMS:	In	other	words	what	you	want	is	the mouth of the river
at Port Susan?
MR. BJORK1UND:	Yes,	where it was before. They surveyed. There is
a pole there and a sign there where it is surveyed to.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	You	want	to	fish,	on	the	Skagit side or the Port
Susan side?
MR. BJORKLUND:	On	Port	Susan	side.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	On	Port	Susan side.
MR. BJORKLUND:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	You	think	that	the	area	that	was	made by the State
Fisheries Board in front of the mouth of the Stilaguamish has been more detrimental to your locality than the areas made in front of all the other streams in the state?
MR. BJORKLUND:	I thought it was surveyed and fixed up before. How*
what the law is now, it "be three mile out from this and there is no chance there to do anything.
MR. SIMS:	What is your business?
MR. BJORKLUND:	Well, I fish and --
MR. SIMS:	What else do you do?
MR. BJORKLUND:	Have a little place there.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Have	you	got	a	ranch?
MR. BJORKLUND:	A	little	ranch,	yes®
510. CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	That	is	your	main	business,	your ranching, is
it?
MR. BJORXLUND:	Well, fish besides.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Well,	I	know,	but	that	is	what	you	make	your
living at, is ranching?
MR. BJORKLUND:	Well, we make some of it, yes, not all, we can-
not do that.
MR. SIMS:	That	is all you want , is it?
MR. BJORKLUND:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	What	is your name?
MR. DUNLAP:	Dunlap.
MR. SIMS:	Mr.	Dunlap, where are you from?
MR. DUNLAP:	La	Conner.
MR. SIMS:	La	Conner?
MR.'DUNLAP:	Yes.
MR.	SIMS:	Will	you please	tell	the Board what you are here for?
MR.	DUNLAP:	It	is pretty	hard	to tell,	I gess, what we are	here
for. Mr. Anderson is the spokesman of our committee, and we had a meeting the other evening and I was elected one of the delegates to come down with Mr. Anderson, just the three of us from the	Commercial	Club	up there	at La Conner.
MR.	SIMS:	I see. You want Mr.	Anderson	to speak, as far as	you
are concerned?
MR. DUNLAP:	He	has studied the subject. He knows more about it
than I do. I am just a merchant there in La Conner.
ICR. BLAKE:	You represent the merchants there, do you, Mr. Dunlap?
MR. DUNLAP:	Yes.
MR. BLAZE:	You	are not a fisherman?
MR. DUNLAP:	Oh,	no.
MR. SIMS:	Did	you sign this petition, Mr. Dunlap?
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MR. DUNLAP:	I	could	not say if I did or not. I was not there
at the time of the meeting.
MR. SIMS:	Well,	you	subscribed	to	the resolution of the Com-
mercial Club of La Conner?
MR. DUNLAP:	Well,	I could not say for that, either, because I
was not at home at that time -- at the time they had that meeting there when that petition was gotten up. I would not say for certain if I signed it or not.
MR. SIMS:	The only thing I was getting at was this, Mr. Dunlap,
that a great many things are brought before a Commercial Club like this, someone offered a resolution and the members subscribed to it; they don't know particularly as to the facts or the conditions, really, that the resolution covers; and I just wanted to know whether you --
MR. DUNLAP:	I	could	not say --
MR. SIMS:	(Continuing)	—	subscribed	to this and whether you know
what --
MR. DUNLAP:	I	know	nothing of the meeting, because I was not at
the meeting, I was not there at the time.
MR. SIMS:	What	is	your name, please?
MR. WAY: Way.
MR. SIMS:	Where	are	you from, please?
MR. WAY:	Everett.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	From the Riverside Chamber of Commerce.
MR. SIMS:	Will	you	please tell the Board what you are here for?
MR. WAY:	I am here with my committee, asked to come down with
them, to bring them down and see what the commission done.
The committee was appointed by my predecessor, and not discharged, so they still are doing the work, and I practically came down as an officer of the Commercial Club to see what we could do with the commission.
MR. SIMS:	But	I	know they have not presented anything to the com-
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mission yet.
MR. WAY:	Mr.	Watson, I believe —
MR. SIMS:	Mr.	who?
MR. WAY:	Mr.	Watson is the practical chairman of that committee.
I just came along.
MR.	SIMS:	I	see. What is	your name,	please?
MR.	WATSON:	B. R. Watson.
MR. SIMS: Mr. Watson?
MR. WATSON: Yes	sir.
MR. SIMS:	Will	you please tell the Board what you are	here	for,
Mr. Watson?
MR. WATSON:	Well, sir, I am down here just for and on behalf of
the fishermen of the Snohomish River, in one sense of the word * and I am	speaking from	the	standpoint as	an	American	citizen.
I want to see equality	and	rights	of all	citizens	alike*
and, above all things, I am placing my stand on my own observations and my experience that I have had to stimulate the conservation and rehabilitation of the salmon and more stringent laws made in that respect than what is at the present time enacted. I donTt feel, or I canrt say, from my own experience and what experience I have had, that the present ruling is conserving the salmon.
MR. SUvlS:	Which	ruling particularly to you	refer to?
MR. WATSON:	To	the Fishing Board ruling.
MR. SIMS:	You	mean the ruling made by the	Fisheries	Board?
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	We	are not in tune with your ideas?
MR. WATSON:	In regard to conserving the salmon.
MR. SIMS:	In	Puget Sound?
MR. WATSON:	Yes, in Puget Sound. I do not believe that the rulings,
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the way they stand today, is conserving the s&lmon; I canTt see where they are.
MR. SIMS:	Have you ever in the past at any time tried to advise
the Fisheries Board, or anybody in the Fisheries Department?
MR. WATSOK:	No	sir.
MR. SIMS:	(Continuing) -- of any errors that they may he making,
or offered any suggestions as to improvement in the policy for the perpetuation and conservation, as you talk about?
MR. WATSON:	I never have but one time and that was just to Mr.
Darwin, and that was in 1914 when I first came to Everett.
MR.	SIMS:	Mr. Darwin is not connected with this Board.
MR.	WATSON:	That is the only time I	ever had any	talk	with	any
official on the fishing industry of this state.
MR. SIMS:	We	have	only been in effect since May, 19E1.
MR.	WATSON:	Yes, I understand that.
MR.	SIMS:	So all other laws previous	to that time	were	made	by
the legislature and —*
MR. WATSON:	Yes,	I understand.
MR. SIMS:	Do you particularly refer to the general laws of the
state as being imperfect, or just particularly as to the regulaticns?
MR. WATSON:	I think, yes, the general laws of the state have been
imperfect, to an extent. I do not think that the conservation of the salmon — the efforts have been made in the proper way to keep up the salmon or the rehabilitation of the salmon. I do not think they are being used as they should be. I think *
they have been extravagant in the appropriation of funds, that is, I think the money has been used extravagantly, that has been
9appropriated for the benefit of our hatcheries. I think the hatcheries could have done a great deal more with the amount of money that they have had than they have done.
MR. SIMS:	Are	you	a	hatcheryman?
MR. WATSON:	Yes	sir.
MR. SIMS:	You	are	a	hatcheryman,
MR. WATSON:	Yes	sir.
MR.	SIMS:	Who	are you employed by?
MR.	WATSON:	I	am employed — I am not at the present	time.
ICR. SIMS:	I	mean	who	were	you	employed	by	when	you	were a hatchery-
man?
MR.	WATSON:	I	was with the Federal	government. I was	in	a United.
States position seven years. I	was superintendent	of	hatchery
two years in the State of Montana.
MR. SIMS:	Have	you	ever	been	employed	on	Puget	Sound	in any of
the hatcheries?
MR. WATSON:	No,	I	never	have,	but	I	have	put	in	eight	years	on
the Pacific Coast, studying the life and habits of salmon; made that my study for eight years, I mean steady, and I have went on the river and I went in the ocean and I went everywhere and I studied them on their natural spawning ground, and I studied the rivers, and what I know in regard to that I know to be of my own practical knowledge. I am not a theoretical man in this work but I am practical.
MR. SIMS:	Now, Mr, Watson, just so that you will understand what
the qualifications or extent of our authority goes to -- I think you are under a misapprehension as to just what our duties are --
MR. WATSON:	Possibly	I	am.
MR. SIMS:	In	the	first	place,	here	is	all	that	our	powers S© to;
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We simply have the power to say what waters can be fished
in --
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS: — when they can be fished in, and what kind of gear can be operated.
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
MB.SIMS:	Now,	the	department	or	the branch of the industry,
or the regulating of the industry, or the perpetuation of it; that gou are discussing, is entirely in the hands of the Supervisor of Fisheries.
J&R. WATSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	And I am satisfied that Mr. Seaborg, or the Hatchery
Superintendent, Mayhail or anyone else connected with that department, will be glad to have you -- or even Prof. Cobb at the University -- enlighten them as to where their policy is wrong, or where the extravagances are, or in any way that an improvement can be made in the fisheries system.
Mft. WATSON:	Yes	sir.
MR. SIMS:	I	am	satisfied	that	you	will	find	every	cooperation,
as far as we are personally concerned, if you should be in Seattle and have a half a day to spend, we will ourselves be glad to have you talk your ideas over with us; although it is not exactly-our branch, we are interested in that work and it will give us some ideas, possibly, that may assist us in arriving at some of the regulations that the law gives us authority to make.
MR. WATSON:	Yes.	Well,	I	would	certainly	be	glad to do that.
MR. SIMS:	So,	practically, the things that you have been talk-
ing about, Mr. Watson, do not come withing the purview of this Bfcard.
MR. WATSON:	No, not exactly. Of course, I have read some of the
rulings, I have heard so much talk about it; a man, you know,
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can hear a whole lot from different ones. They all vary a little in opinion. I speak myself from a scientific standpoint, and I notice most of the talk is not. It is a good deal from talk of --
MR. SIMS:	Will	you	come	over	her, Mr. Watson, just a minute,
please. Here is something I would like to ask you, because I think you have had some experience. I just want you to look at this. You are not interested — you are not a fisherman?
MR. WATSON:	No	sir.
MR. SIMS:	All	you	are	interested	in	is	the perpetuation of fish?
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	These	red	areas	that	you	see	marked give the dead-line
for taking fish at those points. This starts, you will see, above Tacoma. That is Tacoma Bay, and that is Quartermaster Harbor,; then here are all the waters inside of the main Sound in through to Bremerton, Dogfish Bay, out to Agate Pass; Hoods Canal, starting here	at Seabck,	all	these	areas, all	these
streams being closed. This area in	front	of Seattle	is	closed;
this area in front going in down through where the canal is, is closed; this is the Snohomish River; that is the south fork of the Stilaguamish; that is the north fork of the Stilaguamish; and that is the Skagit and Swinomish Slough, this takes in the other end of the Swinomish Slough, Samish and Nooksack; this takes in the Dungeness River and the Elwah River, and takes all the areas inside of the islands. By looking at *that, as a practical man, can you see wherein the rivers mentioned here, the Stilaguamish of the Skagit or the Snohomish, have been	imposed on	any	more than the other	areas
of the state in like	waters?
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MR. WATSON:	Well, I will tell you, the way I figure this in
my experience, that there is times when the fish are in runs, that they should not he -- from the time they lea^e the ocean those schools should not be disturbed by no gear of any hind.
MR. SIMS:	That	is getting outside of this question.
MR. WATSON:	Yes, it is, but I am going to bring that to this;
My opinion is this, and I am confident of my theory, that in closing the rivers is not conserving the salmon, not a bit. The amount of space that is taken in the rivers, compared with what is taken outside — it is the destruction of the immature salmon before they get to the river --
MR. SIMS:	Please	just	a	minute.	Our	policy	may	be	wrong,	We
have defined a policy and it is on that map.
MR.	WATSON: Yes.
MR.	SIMS:	I	am not going to say or argue	with you	about the
policy.	The	only thing I want	you to	say -	if	you wnat to,
say these other things -- but I would like to get an answer to the question as to whether we have discriminated, and you can see the four areas.
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	And	if you can see any discrimination as against
these four places, compared with the arease that have been made in	the	other part of the	Sound?
MR.	WATSON:	No,	I do not see that	there is any	partiality shewn
in there. I think they have all been treated alike, as far as that is concerned.
MR. SIMS:	Donlt	you	think,	as	a	matter	of	fact,	even	further
than that, Mr. Watson, that they have been treated more fairly, when you consider the area that they are in, and the others,
as to the size of the areas we made in front of those four streams?
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MR. WATSON:	Well, I don’t know but they have been treated just
as fairly, as far as that is concerned. They have all been treated, I judge, alike. I don’t see that there is any partiality shown in the thing. But my idea differs, and that is why --
MR. SIMS:	As to the policy of how to do it?
MR. WATSON:	Yes,	your	policies are different altogether from my
ideas. That is all. My idea is that for the conservation of salmon in the Puget Sound country , that in closing any of these rivers is not going to conserve the salmon any.
MR. SIMS:	A party who lives on the Hoods Canal was very strongly
opposed to this Hoods Canal closing, stating that he didn’t think it was going to be beneficial, it was going to deprive the fishermen of a certain area of fishing, and he really was very hitter, I know him quite well. I know hes whole family. Last year he wrote us a letter in which he said that the area that we had made in Hoods Canal and which he had opposed at the time -- that he had entirely changed his mind about it, that he had seen more salmon in the streams of Hoods Canal than he had seen for fifteen years, and for God’s sake never open that Canal below or above the point where we had it, because he absolutely believed that the area, at least in Hoods Canal, was going to be a saver for Hoods Canal.
MR. WATSON:	Well, that is very true, and you find the same exist-
ing in these rivers.
MR. SIMS:	Now, just one minute. Captain Ramwell was over at the
Stilaguamish River when the humpback run was on in 1921, and I sm going to ask the Captain to repeat -- he stopping there at the river where I believe the county engineer and some other
14citizens were-- what statement they made; will you please state that, Captain?
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Yes,	they stated that they had never seen so
many salmon in the Stilaguamish as they had seen in that year, not in twenty years -- salmon going up to spawn.
MR. WATSON:	That	is	very	true.
MR. SIMS:	I	was up at a place called Hazel in -- I guess that
is on the Stilaguamish, isn*t it? - Yes, I was up to a place, to a family called, I believe, Anderson -- no, not Anderson, I have forgotten the name, Anyhow, I stayed there a couple of days. There was an old fellow there, a Scandinavian, who owned some land, and-he had been in California, and the discussion came up between them, not with myself, -- I didnTt discuss the fish question -- and this fellow that had been in California, this old friend of theirs, who had been a resident of this place, ashed this family how the fish ha'd been in the stream this year and last year, and they told him that there had been more fish up at that point than there had been in a good many years, and I think that a great many, even grown people, were shooting them, pitchforking them out and abusing them and all that kind of thing. So it is absolutely apparent to us, from observation made -- we have had inspectors out on the different streams and from offhand information that we get-- that the areas and the closing of streams have allowed more salmon to go to the streams.
Nov/, a party made this statement to me practically this last fall, he said "The area that you have put here in front of Seattle" -- he said "I would give ten thousand dollars for one day's right to fish in Seattle or the Bay here, in Elliot Bay.” He said, "I never have seen that time when I would have
15dl4
done that before." In other words, there were more fish.
MR. WATSON:	That is very true. But now, as I say, speaking from the
scientific standpoint; there were more fish in the rivers last year than there is availbable spawning ground for.
We admit that right straight through. You haven’t got one third of the spawning grounds today that we had thirty years ago. So, by letting the fish go tip there, they only destroy each other’s eggs. I was up the Pilchuck here a while back, clear up six miles pretty near above the logging operations. I was almost to the head of the Noon-sack last fall. And you canlt find a spawning bed today
in any river -- and I was all over Grays Harbor County last week -- you can*t find a spawning bed below the logging operations today, that is getting any fish eggs in it. It is not the nature of those fish to spawn where the water is polluted in any way; they wonft do it. If they are crowded down from above , sometimes they will fall back and will spawn in those places, but those eggs never hatch, they never get anything out of them, they never thrive.
MR. SIMS:	You	mention	logging	operations.	You	mean	where	they
are logging in the rivers.
MR. WATSON:	Yes, and where there is a town that empties a sewer
into the river, that is destructive as to eggs that hatch.
That is when they are destructive.
MR. SIMS:	I have made the general statement that if there were no
fishermen at all, if there were no commercial fishing, that as the commercial life of the state grows, it is just a question of time until the fish themselves absolutely will be depleted.
ICR. WATSON:	They deplete, yes.
MR. SIMS:	From the natural effect of civilization.
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MR. WATSON:	Certainly they will. Now, that is proven by the
fact -- I can show you down on the Alsea River -- that is a river in Oregon that is the least molested of any river emptying into the Pacific Ocean, I believe, not fishing done on it whatever -- every eight years they have a feig run of salmon and every eight years they have a very light run. Now, if you will ask some of them -- I asked Prof. Cobb and Prof. Cobb could not tell me why it was; he said MI donft know what to attribute that to.” I said ,TI can tell you". I said, "I know. The year that they have the £ig run they destroy each other*s eggs, and very few hatched, very few of them ever thrive and get to the sea.
When they do get	back, there	is a	light	run.	That year
there are spawning beds, and	they	make a	good	strong hatch.
Four years later they ha^e another big run of salmon. There is a record there that will verify that statement.
ICR. SIMS:	I don*t think there is any question about it, I think
that is a pretty	sound idea.
MR. WATSON:	My idea	is this, to	protect the	young	and immature
salmon. Those are the ones that have been so destroyed.
Have the mesh so regulated in order to let those fish go through. If the river fishermen took half of the fish that went up the Snohomish River this year, they womfld have more fish hatched and thrive and get to the ocean than there would have been if half of those fish hadnTt been taken out; there would be more of them if half of them were taken out than there will be now by letting them all go. s. SIMS:	Mr. Watson, let me tell you what we did two years ago
the very first opportunity that we had. It was in the summer months and in the season when fish were coming. I haven't
17dl6
the report right at hand, it is in the files somewhere, e had a biological survey made of all the streams in the northwest up here, and I believe some, maybe the White River or Nesqually, just for the very purpose of trying to find out the requirements of the fish, to cover the spawning grounds and the possibility of seed in these different streams; and the report was, in 1921, that the streams -- and they mentioned them by name — the grade of fish that hwere there in the streams they went to and the places that could be improved, and we have bben trying to get up to that point, realize, just as you do, that it is a difficult question for a layman to settle, as to when there are sufficient fish in a stream so that they will not destroy themselves and get the quantity to perpetuate and keep them on an average run. Now, we tried to find that by scientific people who knew, and the man from the University of California I believe was the man who did the work, Anyhow, he was secured by John Cobb, and we joined in the work, the Supervisor of the Fisheries Department joined in it, and also the university. And we have been carrying on that work. They had it transferred to the Columbia River and down on the coast streams, so that the balance of the Sound has not been covered yet, but those very points you are talking' about are the ones that we have been trying to arrive at.
Our theory apparently has got results in at least bringing fish to the streams.
MR. WATSON:	Yes, that is true.
MR. SIMS:	We	do	not believe we are ever going to know whether
our policy is entirely successful until we get a cycle. Now, for instance, we have had two years of operation under what
18d!7
we call our policy. Now, the fishermen from the Skagit and the Noonsack and some from the Snohomish have been more or less insistent on the opening of the rivers and the lessening of the areas. We feel that we know that the fish have improved in the streams. We feel that if we go to work and destroy this policy, that when the time comes when the cycle comes £ack for the fish that we saved in 1921, that we will have no record of it at all and it will absolutely be lost.
We are proposing to go through at least until we are shown otherwise, continue our policy through at least one cycle of fish. Now, whether that is good judgment or not --
MR. WATSON:	Do	you really think, Mr. Sims, that there will be
any more fish hatched in the river, and thrive, from the amount of fish that is now going into the river, than there has been for the last several years with the river fishermen fishing them?
MR. SIMS:	Well,	now	--
ICR. WATSON:	That	is,	I	am	speaking from my own scientific knowl-
edge, the study I have made of it. I think that if half of the salmon that went up the Snohomish River this year had been kept hack and hadn't gone up, you would have had more young fish hatched and from the natural spawning beds than you will have.
MR. SIMS:	I can tell you, as an improvement that we have made
upon the very proposition that you are talking about, that during the time when the fishermen were fishing in the Snohomish River, as I remember it -- and this is simply from memory, because it was refreshed here the other day -- as I remember it, at Gold Bar I think they took about a million and a half against — my understanding is that last year, I presume it was 1922, they took about seven million. Now, I don't know
19die
about the lower one, So there has been some improvement in tha t.
MR. WATSON:	That	is	very	true. I saw the letter that was out
in the paper some time ago that they hod taken sixteen million eggs last year.
I^R. SIMS:	Maybe that is it.
MR. WATSON:	Of	course,	I	can’t help but feel, from my own per-
sonal experience, but what it is considerably exaggerated, because there is no hatchery in the United States that will hold sixteen million.
MR. SIMS:	Those	eggs	are	shipped.	We hatched in the Ealama
hatchery -- we took about	forty	million eggs, and	our hatch
right there in the Kalama	hatchery -- that Kalama	hatchery
at Kalama -- was about forty million. I don’t beliege they took that many last year, but that was their take for quite a number of years.
MR.	WATSON:	How many troughs have they	there?
MR.	SIMS:	I	don’t	know, Mr. Watson, I	was at	the hatchery	a
good many years ago. But Mr. Seaborg can tell you that.
MR. WATSON:	I found that it	existed	with	the	government	just	as
well as it does with the	state,	as	far	as	that	is	concerned.
I found Dr. Henshaw, whom	I was	under there for seven years	--
that he exaggerated about	fifty	to sixty per cent	on his out-
put of fish, in his reports; and when a man works right in the hatchery,	does	the work, where he sees the	eggs and counts
them and	knows	what his loss is, he	knows.	I have read	his
reports and I have read other reports. I have read one report where they hatched ninety-six per cent, It is impossible to do that. It never was done on earth and never will be done.
MR. SIMS:	Let’s	say,	just	for argument, that they do exaggerate
fifty per cent.
MR. WATSOH:	Yes,	even	at	fifty per cent.dl9
MR. SIMS:	We will just say it was exaggerated fifty percent, it
would be at least a six hundred percent increase, even then.
MR. WATSON:	Yes, he would have a six hundred percent increase at
that, that is very true. I believe there ought to be fish enough allowed to enter the rivers to supply the hatcheries,
64.	and I don't think at the time they are supplying hatcheries
there ought to he any fish allowed to be taken, anyhow until these schools get in. For I will tell you, salmon choose their mates in the sea. If any of their mates are taken -- the mate of either one of those fish are taken after they have been alloted that mate in the sea, that female*s eggs are lost, and if the female is taken and the male goes in, he only causes fight and disturbance amoung the others, because he is going to find a place to deposit his milk somehwere and he will fight off the other weaker males all the time; consequently it causes some confusion. And that is why I say fishing ought to be strictly prohibited at certain periods, so as to let those fish go by, end then you can always get plenty of fish for your hatcheries. After you get plenty of fish for your hatcheries, any man who is familiar with conditions and is familiar with rivers, it is easy enought 4o find out then, you can tell the time that the fish can be allowed to be taken.
MR. SIMS:	Here is the trouble about that situation, according to
the hearing that we had in June, 1921, particularly as to these particular rivers. I canTt just put my finger on it but if you are familiar with the conditions in front of the Skagit and the Stilaguamish —* statements were made by fishermen themselves in this hearing of June 20, 1921, in which they went on to say that the fish laid in front of those rivers as long as thirty to forty days, depending on the conditions of the water and conditions in the river,and sometimes over-night
2120
they would entirely disappear and go up the stream. We have
tried to cut off the taking of the fish on the end oi the run, in sufficient time to allow the proportion that v^e think is necessary to get by, both for the natural and the artificial propagation, but we have not yet, in our es^ima tion, iuliy supplied the streams to the extent that the investigation made by the biological survey covered. Apparently the statement made by Balbridge is correct - and I think even Mr. Vail, and what was that other fellowTs name, that dark-haired fellow --
A VOICE:	Vosgen.
MR. SIMS:	Vosgen. We had been asking him abo\it the spawning beds
on the Snoqualmie and the Snohomish. He himself went up and told us -- and other fishermen -- of how the fish used to spawn and that those beds at the present time were absolutely void, were not any fish on them at all. I think that was even as late as last summer, wasn’t it, Mr. Vail?
MR. VAIL:	Two	years	ago.
MR. SIMS:	We had a man on those beds in 1921. It was humpback
season at that time that we were particularly talking about, and there was some improvement, but nothing as to the improvement that we believe and are told that the stream will yet bear.
MR. WATSON:	I talked with Mr. Vosgen there and he told me the
same thing that he told you. I f&und out that Mr. Vosgen had been looking at the spawning beds that were below these little towns and below the logging operations, which you will never see salmon stop on in any case if they can possibly get up to where there is purer water; it is not the nature of a fish to u0 ^ ^ ♦ they are going to hunt pure water; and another thing, a salmon is just as particular in hunting a location to raise its young where there is food for that fish as any animal would bet or anything else. Ihe reason why they don’t see them on this Ded — you would not see them on it unless the rivers above
22d21
were so crowded with salmon that they would get up there and find that they could not do anything until they would begin to get tired and worn out and they would fall downstream and finally then deposit their eggs on those "beds, hut they don’t make much cf a nest, because they are too near exhausted when they get back.
MR. SIMS:	Are	you acquainted with the Skykomish River from say
Sold Bar up?
MB. WATSON:	No,	not	very	much up in there.
MR. SIMS:	Well,	from about , I would say, Startup	—
MR. WATSON:	Not	any further than Gold Bar.
MR. SIMS:	The balance of that stream I think it must be maybe
thirty miles long up the the head waters, it is nothing but a boulder stream, so practically you might say, even if there are a few salmon going up the little creek, even in that section we got no salmon, So that practically all the conditions that you have in mind, and which I believe affect the salmon, are below that, and, of course, then they come in contact with civilization, but that is something we can’t help.
MR. WATSON:	That	is	it.	The most efficient spawning groung is
practically destroyed by the progress of civilization, and my idea is that they will never be brought back again unless it is done by artificial propagation,and I think artificial propagation can	be carried on to a greater	extent	with the	same
amount of money that has been used than	it has	been. You	take
the Federal government, in hatching they went to work and built some troughs, they had troughs thirty feet long, two feet wide and two feet deep. They set hatching trays in there that would hatch fifty thousand eggs in a tray, and some maybe handled a hundred thousand eggs in a tray. They never had any cover; they covered them over with just canvas and shut the sun out.
23d22
The idea of raising fish until they get old enough to take care of themselves is one of the greatest mistakes that ever was talked of in hatching. You take the fish and you can train a fish just like you can tain a horse. A fish is a very sensitive	animal. I have had	them	trained there as	pets	until
you cot Id	go out there at any	time	and stick your
finger in the water and they would take hold of it and play with it. You put the fish in there and raise your fish until they are fingerlings, and when you put them out in the water you put them out and watch them day in and day out, and they never will rustle when they get out. The birds pick them up, the fish are devoured and gone. You take them on a spawning bed, it absorbs water to give the fish mourishment and you can see, as soon as it gets strength from the water, it will straighten itself out and break the shell. That is the time they are destroyed in this polluted water. The fish smothers at that time.
Nov;, my theory is that they will never be brought back under any conditions unless it is done by artificial propagation, and it can be done on a large scale with a small capital if it is handled in the proper way. They don't need to go to work and build these big fine hatcheries. I will tell you, in 1896up to	1902, the Bozeman,	Montana, hatchery cost the	government six thousand six hundred	some	dollars -- I did	know	exactly
what it was -- to operate that hatchery twelve months with five men. The superintendent and the fish culturist and two laborers drew an annual salary for twelve months. That hatchery hatched, grayling and trout together, a little over seven million besides one million whitefish that we never counted on very much we hatched, trout and grayling, that way, over five million fish. That was all the amount of money it took to carry that hatchery. Amid according to Mr. Darwin's report -- is all I
24i22
have got to go by here --it cost twelve or fifteen thousand dollars to operate a hatchery in this state. I canrt see but what the hatchery should be built in a crude way up and down the rivers and built right where the fish can be caught and where the eggs can be got and handled, then these troughs can be taken away and moved away there out of high waters and moved back in spring at the hatching time. If it was taken in hand and carried that way, it would not take but a very few hatcheries to hatch and plant more fish than all of the fish that is ever taken in one year, put together, would amount to.
MR. SIMS:	I	can’t imagine any hatchery that I can think of now
that would cost twelve tousand dollars. As a matter of fact, we sent a crew to Alaska last year, and I think we brought back about twenty million humpbacks. We had to build our stations, ship the men up there, make the weirs or whatever was necessary to get them. One was in Prince William Sound and the other one in Southeastern Alaska. As I remember it, our total costs, even for that, were around about twenty thousand dollars. And in figuring out the estimated cost of their hatcheries on Puget Sound that we had selected to run, as I remember it, or that were selected to run by Mr. Seaborg, they seemed to me to run about three to five thousand dollars to the hatchery, depending on the size of the hatchery. I can see where possibly the ICalama Hatchery might run into more money than the above, because that is a very big hatchery and they take a lot of eggs there. I have an idea it is the biggest 7.	one.
And here is one thing I want to ask you about, because I think your ideas certainly are along my thought. Of course, this is not a new scheme, as I understand it, but it is being followed a little but more now by the culturists of British
25i£4
Columbia, the State of Washington and Oregon, — Oregon not to such a degree, excepting more in the experimental stage.
That is the "box system. In other words, now, they are taking --I have forgotten, I believe they 'put five humdred thousand eggs -that number may "be off -- and they build this box and they "bury these eggs in some stream leading into the main stream, and then f	protect	it	so	that it has the water, keeping the other fish
away from the young. They are finding very good results in that. That, in itself, will do away with the hatcheries. What do you think of that theory?
MR. WATSON:	Well, I will tell you, it would be all right, probably,
under ceratin conditions, but I don't think you would get anything like the percentage that you could get where they were cared for in troughs, because I have tried it in every way, shape and form to try. You have always got to do more of less work; it don't make any difference, if one egg turns white, then that egg looses its weight and fungus will start on it inside of two hours. Then it absorbs water again and its weight comes back to it and it settles down. Then, consequently, if you leave a tray right in a trough and leave it stay there very long with eggs on, you will take out bunches of eggs that big (illustrating) where they have all fungussed together. So I can't see where the system would be very profitable in the long run. I think, with the expense of taking the eggs and putting them in there, with ,the loss that you would have, it would be a whole lot better to put them in where they could be handled. It is a very easy matter to handle a lot of eggs in the trough until they are hatched.
After they are hatched, you can't handle very many.
MR. SIMS:	According to your theory, you don't believe in the rear-
26
\d£5
ing or nursing of these fish, such	as	a great many	people	ex-
pound; that is not your theory?
MR. WATSON:	How?
MR. SIMS:	That is, in the rearing, you know there are two thoughts
of the culturiats and those touch the hatchery business. One is certain that the fish should be liberated just as soon as he is able to take care of himself; the other fellow believes --the other set of thought believes that the fish should be	put
in rearing ponds and fed, even up	to	six to eight	inches	in
length.
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	You	know that there are two distinct lines of thought
about that business.
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	And	one	is	just as sure of his theory as the other fel-
low. You are of the first —
MR. WATSON:	Let me ask you:	Don't you really think it seems more
logical and would be natural if the fish were hatched and then •ut on these gravel beds where the food is naturally there in the water for them, and put on there at the time they begin to take food? After you feed those a little while in the trough, if you stick your finer in the water there are a thousand of them right around it. If you start those fish that way, with that artificial food, and then turn them out into the rivers, they expect you to feed them, they expect food to come from you, they are not going to rustle. Don't it seem more logical?
Don't it seem reasonable that your fish would get out and rustle its own living and stay away from its enemies, as nature has provided it to do, better than if it was fed and its life
2726
was entirely changed from what it naturally would be? Doesn’t it seem logical?
MR. SIMS:	I used to be a fisherman and that used to be my idea,
but after reading the reports a nd experiments and results, for instance of the Oregon fellows, some of the United States experiments and others, to be frank about it at the present time I donTt know which is the best way.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Oregon	adopts that policy there to raise them
and they say it is the right policy.
MR. WATSON: You figure the expense and cost of raising those and you can'1 raise them; I donTt care, you can't raise them; you canrt take a humdred thousand eggs and hatch over -- well, you can't hatch over seventy-five or eighty per cent of them from the time the eggs are taken, to save your life, under any conditions, I don't care what they are, We were considered to have one of the best hatcheries in the United States. We would take those fish and put them in the ponds, where they were not crowded, and we had an abundance of fine water, and we gave them proper food, and there would never be a day that we would not take out anywhere from one to a dozen dead fish. What shot Id cause that I think no one could tell. Feeding artificial food, naturally it is not their nature, they don't get the food they get when they are out, they don't get the blood and bone that they get from natural insects in the water, and you could not take a humdred thousand of those fish and raise them until they were one year old and save more than ten or fifteen thousand of them.
MR. SIMS:	Getting back to why these gentlemen are here today, it
is to open up these streams and get more fish. If we whould be impressed with the argument set forth here today, there would
28i27
be just one thing, in my judgment, left for us to do, if our policy was to be changed in that respect:	The	thing we would
automatically do would be to do the same with every other stream in the state that is in the same condition; otherwise, we would then be giving a preference to these particular fishermen as against the other fishermen of the state.
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	That	would	be the natural outcome of any change in this,
wouldn’t it, in your judgment?
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	That is the way I look at it. Now, Mr. Watson, as you
know, Mr. Seaborg is a very nice fellow, he is very much interested in his work, and I know that ne would be glad to have you talk to him. This hatching business is his business. Our authority only goes to when they can fish and where they can fish and how long they can fish.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Mr. Watson made a statement some time ago that
the members of the Fisheries	Board were	interested	in	traps.
MR.	WATSON:	Ihave always been informed that	way,	Captain	Ramwell.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Yes, as I say, you made thelpositiye statement,
though, didn*t you?
MR.	WATSON:	I made it as it was	made to me.
MR.	SIMS:	That has not come out	here today.
MR. WATSON:	No.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL: No, but it came out in the press that the Fisheries Board
MR. WATSON:	The Fisheries Board, the magority of the Fisheries
Board was interested in the traps and had been trap men right along.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	For your information, there is not anybody con-
29nected with the Board that owns a trap.
MR. WATSON:	There is not?
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	No.	I	own a cannery, or it owns me, I don't
know which, and it has not run for several years, and I am the only member of the Board that has anything to do with the fisheries business.
MR. SIMS:	You	don't	own	any fishing equipment, do you?
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	No.
MR. SIMS:	Aa	a matter of fact, Mr. Watson, there are none of us
that are interested in any kind of fishing equipment whatever. I used to be a fisherman. I sold out finally in 1917, and I don't own any interest in any canneries or fishing equipment of any kind.
MR. WATSON:	I would like to ask a question before I get through.
Don’t you believe that the traps could he runa-md should have an open season'for the traps the same as there is and has been for the rivers? That would permit more fish to go through to the rivers than there is. Even as I say, if there is an over proportion of the fish entering the rivers this year, that they could be divided and more of them get £y thetraps; they could be operated with a mesh regulated so that these young salmon could pass through witnout being so man# of the young salmon destroyed.
MR. SIMS:	We have done that very thing. If you will just step over
here, I will show you. How long have you been on the Sound, Mr.
Watson?
MR. WATSON:	I have been here ten years, but I have not been fishing.
MR. SIMS:	You have heard, I presume, just as we all have, particular-
ly ia this section down around this way, that a great many saall fish were being taken.
30d£9
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	Well,	the	legislature has passed law after law, at-
tempting by some different regulation each time to try and effect that very purpose.
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	So	I	lbelieve it was last year -- when was it we put
in that web business, Mr. Strong?
MR. STRONG:	Last	year.
MR. SIMS:	Last	year we went to work in the areas her in which
all these small fish might be and increased the mesh in all the equipment, not only in the traps, but the purse-seines, drag seines, or any kind of operation, during the months when these small fish were in the waters; we did that very thing.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	And	aleo	there	is	another	thing	too:	For years
they had been fishing down there in Possession Sound, Posses-sioii Head and around there, with sqall mesh, catching these trout. We stopped that entirely,
ICR. WATSON:	I	know that. I was with the Everett Packing Company
a year when I first came to Everett, and. I noticed that at that time the drift-netters were destroying lots of young fish.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	That	is	the	trout.
MR. WITSON:	Yes.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	You	know	that	in	front	of	Everett	there	there
ere hundred of them.
MR. WATSON:	Yes,	I	know.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	And	they	caught	them	by	the	thousands.
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Thrown	away	by	the	ton.
SId3G
MR. WATSON:	Yes.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	All	right,	We	stopped	all	of	that.	Where	is
the other place where they are destroyed?
MR. WATSON:	My own knowledge aroung the traps, as I say, has
been practically hearsay, I will say that, hut I have been informed by so many different ones that the traps, the trap line -- the mesh has been so small that the kill so many of the young fish, and then they go in, cut them out, and let them fall until the beaches have "been literally lined with millions and millions of those young fish each year. A trap man told a friend of mine here that he set a trap and they used to test the trap out, and the first night he got fifteen hundred springs and thirty-three humdred young salmon from ten to twelve inches long. He said in his own experience that it would average at least two young salmon to one adult salmon taken in the trap each year. If they were gilled or killed or anything, they were thrown out and destroyed, while the adults were put on the market.
MR. SIMS:	I	am	glad you mentioned that, for this reason, and
this you can verify:	We examined all the traps and all the
other fishing equipment last year, and we found here at Meadow Point -- we were at Meadow Point three different times watching them lift to see the effect, what fish were caught.
Fish were escaping up to six pounds in weight. We weighed the fish that were left in.
Here is another thing, which can be verified from the report:	We	all know that up until this larger mesh was installed
in 1922, a good many sockeyes were caught inside of the pass. There were no sockeyes caught last year at all.
In other words, they all escaped between that large mesh that
32we installed. So that those conditions, if they are true —
LIE. WATSON:	Where was the sockeye taken last year that was canned?
I see by the report that there were some seventy thousand cases canned.
MR. SILTS:	Oh,	they	took them in the Gulf of Georgia, the San Juan
Islands, Lopez —
MR.	WATSON:	Were they taken	by seines and	traps?
MR.	SIMS:	Seines, traps and	gill nets.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	If we didn't get them, do you know where they
would go?
MR. WATSON:	Yes, I know where they would go.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Fraser River, they would go right into the Fraser
River nets.
MR. WATSON:	They would probably go into the Fraser River, if they
were not protected there. I don*t know how they are protected there. Of course, I was	informed that	they had	a	very	strong,
stringent law there and that they were	protected	over	there
sometime ago, for a good many years, and then they finally turned them loose and told them to catch what they could, as long as they were going to catch them on this side, that they were going to catch them there as long as they lasted.r4?
STATEMENT OF E. HOGAN.
MR.	S IlvTS:	What is your name,	please?
MR.	HOGAN:	E. Hogan.
MR.	SIMS:	Will you just tell	the Board	what	you are here for,
Mr. Hogan?
MR. HOGAN:	I	am	here	representing the fishermen in the Snohomish
River. The idea of the fishermen is to conserve the fish more so than the traps is, because the trap is built out there and they get the first chance at it, and the way it appears that what they canTt catch they don't want nobody else to have. Now, the small fisherman, he has got two or three or four humdred dollars tied up in a fishing outfit, and this ruling that is passed by your Honorable Board has put them all out of business.	There is	one humdred	and ten
fishermen o n the river,	and they catch	in the	neighborhood
of, according to your report here and our own buyer's report, between forty-seven and forty-nine thousand a year. One year went to forty-four thousand. And you will admit that your traps catch that much in one day.
MR.	SIMS:	Which traps	are you	tilting about, what traps in
Puget Sound, those	located	in front of this	river or where?
MR.	HOGAN:	In various	places. Any trap pretty	near will catch
more than that in a week -- than the fishermen catch in a whole year. One humdred and ten fishermen make a living on that.
MR. SIMS:	You	think	that a trap will catch more than one humdred
and ten fishermen do?
MR. HOGAN:	Yes,	one	trap will catch more than one humdred and ten
fishermen.
MR. SIMS:	For	the	whole	season?
MR.	HOGAN:	For the whole season.
54|
[ c.
MR. SIMS:	And	you	think	will	catch	more	in	one	day.
MR. HOGAN:	More in one day, yes.
MR. SIMS:	Mr. Hogan, without wanting to challenge your notion, it
will be interesting if you will just go and get some of the information as to what traps catch.
MR. HOGAN:	I	see.	Well, I have got --
MR. SIMS:	I would he tickled to death to have a trap that would
catch, in a season, all of the fish that one humdred and ten fishermen catch -- not in one day, but in a whole season.
MR. HOGAN:	I	am	taking	the	Snohomish	River,	something	that	I	know
something about.
MR. SIMS:	I	know,	but	you	are	making	the	statement	that there are
one humdred and ten fishermen.
MR.	HOGAN:	Yes , one	hundred	and ten.
ICR.	SIMS:	That catch	so many	fish.
MR. HOGAN:	Yes.
MR.	SIMS:	And do you	know or	have you	heard of	traps	that are catching in	one day as	many as	they catch	in a whole	season?
MR. HOGAN:	Yes,	I	have.
MR.	SIMS:	All right. Do you believe that the fish,	up	to the	time
that we made this regulation, were decreasing or	—
MR. HOGAN:	I	have	been	born	and	raised	on	the	Snohomish	River	and	I
have studied the fish and I have raised fish every year. I have raised	them this year.
MR.	SIMS:	What do you say about the decrease in the	river, in	for-
mer years?
LIR. HOGAN:	Well,	I tell you, I know the large decrease. I have seen
them so thick that you could catch them by taking a hook and putting on a weight and dragging it across the river, anytime, and the same way with sturgeon. But the idea is this, that this Honorable Board created a rulin, without any notice, I be-
55lieve, or at least I didn't get any, and all our money is invested in locations. We were allowed by law to survey locations, and put cut of business without any notice, to my knowledge, wha t ever.
MR.	SIMS:	You	had no notice of any meeting?
MR. HOGAN:	Well,	we had meetings, but at the same timenyou had
your gear and your location, it is .just like to kill everything, you canrt sell it, and what are you going to do?
MR. SIMS:	So	you say there was never any notice to you or the other
fishermen that --
MR.	HOGAN:	We	got a	notice to stop.
MR.	SIMS:	You	never	knew it was going to be	stopeed?
MR.	HOGAN:	We	heard	it was going to be stopped,	but	what are you
going to do with your location, who is going to take it?
MR. SIMS:	Please	don’t worry about the locations for a minute.
MR. HOGAN:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	We	are	now talking about this business, that the fisher-
men were put out of business, withou any notice, arbitrarily, over night.
MR. HOGAN:	Well,	practically speaking, it is just the truth --
we were put out of business.
MR. SIMS:	My	dear friend, in June, 1921, after a published
notice in all the papers, and with representatives from both your district and the Stilaguamish and the Skagit and every other part of that section, we held a hearing to find out what we could do in those particular localities, and the fishermen were there, and the evidence of their hearing is in this book.
CAPTAIN Rj.I.iWELL:	Whiting was there.
MR. POGAN:	Charlie	Whiting?
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Yes.
MR. HOGAN:	That	doesn’t make any difference. What are we going toLS5
do with our locations that we bought, cost three to four hundred to four thousand dollars?
MR. SIMS:	Now, just tell the Board what it is you want us to do.
LIR. HOGAN:	Well, what we want -- what fishermen want to do --
I know what I want to do, but what the fishermen want to do is to ^iye everybody a right to fish a certain amount, a certain time in the year, and let- the fish go. If you want to saye the fish, donTt stop the one that got five per cent, stop the one.that gets the humdred per cent.
MR. SIMS:	Are	the -fishermen being stopped from fishing now?
MR. HOGAN:	All	of them in the river has feeen stopped, to a cer-
tain extent.
LIR. SIMS:	Can	they go outside of any channel, outside of the mouths
of all these rivers, and fish?
MR. HOGAN:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	From	Cape Flattery to Tacoma.
MR. HOGAN:	Yes.
MR. SII;!S: And from --
MR. HOGAN:	But	at least you are limited --
MR. SIMS:	I am asking whether the fishermen can fish or whether
they can’t fish. They may not be ahle to fish just exactly where they would like to fish.
LIR. HOGAN:	No.
LIR. SIMS:	But	are they stopped from fishing in Puget Sound today?
MR. HOGAN:	Practically, yes.
LIR. SIMS:	They	are?
LIR. HOGAN:	Yes.
Lf.. SIMS:	Where	do all these fish come from that are being caught
and canned and sold?
LIR. KOGAN:	Traps	and seines.
LIR. SIMS:	No	gill nets?
37MR. HOGaN:	They are an odd one.
MR. SIMS:	How many gill nets would you say were being operated
on Puget Sound in 1922?
MR. HOGAN:	I	don't	know. I know there was only two in around the
mouth of Snohomish River, that I saw.
MR. SIMS:	Do	you know anything about	the	Gulf of	Georgia?
MR. HOGAN:	I	have	seen it, yes.
MR. SIMS:	I know,	but anything about	the	fishing?
MR. HOGAN:	I	have	seen them fish out	there, yes.	I	operated one
over there on the Fraser River.
MR.	SIMS:	I am talking about	the Sulf of	Georgia,	in	American
waters. You say there is	an odd --
MR.	HOGAN:	Our own condition	around here	at	Everett,	is	what I
am talking about; what I	know of.
MR. SIMS:	What you want, then, you want the Snohomish River
opened?
MR. HOGAN:	Well,	I	want an equal right as Anerican citizen, born
and raised American citizen; I want an equal right to fish according	to your	means.
MR.	SIMS:	You have	that.
MR.	HOGAN:	Yes, we	have, we have	a	privilege to	have	four	or	five
hundred	dollars	tied up in	location,	and ruling	put	us	out.	We
protested against it, and the Skagit fishermen protested against it, and we are only fishing six hours a day, and there is no man living can fish any more than six hours, unless there is a freshet in the river; and the trap fishes twenty-four hours a day seven days in the week. And mostly a fisherman goes out and he can’t stand to drift more than six hours and work it, he can’t stand it.
MR. SIMS:	Do	they	fish seven days a week?37
MR. HOGAN:	They donTt always. We have thirty-six hours closed
season for part of the time.
MR. SIMS:	Do they fish tv.enty-four hours a day?
MR. HOC AN:	No sir, there is no fisherman fishes	in	the rivers
twenty-four hours a day.
MR. SIMS:	You	say	a trapman fishes twenty-four hours a day seven
days a week.
MR. HOGAN:	He	has	a trap out there.
MR. SIMS:	It is out there.
MR. HOGAN:	Yes, and I have been on	them	and	they	raised	them at
various times and they always had fish.
MR. SIMS:	And	the	fish	kept	going	in	for the twenty-four hours?
MR. HOGAN:	How	is	that?
MR. SIMS:	I	say	the	trap	still	fishes	all	the	twenty-four	hours?
MR. HOGAN:	Well, the trap is open for business.
MR. SIMS:	Why is it that your gill nets only fish	for the	six
hours?
MR. HOGAN:	Because	the	fish	sees	the	net.	Mr.	Ramv/ell, I believe,
said that our nets destroyed the immature fish and we were destroying the dog salmon and humpbacks,	and	I	will	say	for the --
MR. SIMS:	That is not the point.
CAPTAIN RAMWEE1:	Hold	on	a	minute.
MR.	SIMS:	You say	the gill net	fishes only six hours and the reason
that they have	a	short time	to fish is because the fish sees the
net.
MR. HOGAN:	If	you	donft	have	your	net	out,	there	is	no	chance to
fish.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	When	did	I	make	this	statement you are talking
about?
R.	SIMS: Wait until	I get this	point. Don!t you think the fish
sees the net on	a	trap and a	purse seine that is out in the other
29waters just the same as he sees it	in	the river?
MR. HOG Ail:	No doubt about it at all.	It	acts as a lead,	like	a
barbed wire fence. They will follow it better in the daytime than they will at night.
MR. SIMS:	Well, I can see that you know but very little about the
purse seine or the trap business or the gill net business in the salt waters of Puget Sound.
MR.	HOGAN:	Well, I don’t. I don’t know an awful lot	about	gill
netting	in the salt water, because I have	tried a	good many
times and it took too much capital	to	operate; but I	do know
that the trap and the seines bring	in	the goods. So there
is where your fish is being depleated.
MR. SIMS:	Mr. Hogan, do you think that you have been discriminated
aga inst?
I/TH. HOGAN:	I sure do.
MR.	SIMS:	As against the other rivers of the	state?
MR.	HOGAN:	No, not against the other rivers,	but the	small	fisher-
man has been discriminated against.
MR. SIMS:	The small ones.
MR. HOGAN:	Everybody	knows	that, the general public and the whole
community.
MR.	SIMS:	Will	you just step over	here just	a	minute. Nov;, we
will	take Hoods Canal,	because	you	seem	to	be pretty	well	posted
on descrimination. Now, that is about forty miles from here to here.
MR.	HOGAN:	Yes	sir.
MR.	SIMS:	Now,	they can’t	operate	any	kind	of	gear that	they	want
to operate in that forty miles.
MR. HOGAN:	Inside	of	that?
MR.	SIMS:	Well, they can’t operate now,	but they could.
MR.	HOGAN:	YeS, I see.
MR.	SIMS:	Has there been any particular	discrimination ih	these
waters against the small fisherman, different from anybody
4028
else?
MR. HOGAN:	Well, it don’t	appear. This map	here does	not	--
MR. SIMS:	Nobody can fish	in these waters.	You see	the	widtn of
them, and it is over forty miles long, some places three or four miles wide, and there is nobody in the State of Washington who can fish in these waters legitimately.
MR. HOGAN: I see. Now, I would like to ask you one question:	Why
wasn't	that cut square	across there on a	line?
MR. SIMS:	On wh i ch line?
MR. HOGAN:	Right	here.
MR. SIMS:	There	are no streams below the point where the red line
is.
MR. HOGAN:	There are some	streams there.
MR. SIMS:	Are they salmon	streams?
MR. HOGAN:	I don't know;	all freshwater streams.
MR. SIMS:	We have made and examination isr, of this district.
These lines were not arrived at by $ust drawing with a pencil or guessing at them. The	men examined the	streams in	Hoods
Canal up above that point	at Seabeck, where that line	is drawn,
and then likewise in here in this upper Sound area, and in here,
MR. HOGAN:	Isn't there a trap right there?
MR. SIMS:	There is one trap down in here somewhere. If you were to
follow where they fish to a conclusion, you might as well follow them and put the line across Cape Flattery. You have got to allow a certain amount of fishing.
MR. HOGAN:	What	would	be	wrong with giving fish free access for,
say, two weeks, in a good	part of the run,	let nobody	fish?	If
you want fish to go up there, let them go.
MR. SIMS:	How are you gong to let them go?
MR. HOGAN:	Stop the traps, stop the seiners, let everybody stop.
41MR. SIMS:	Do you know, as a matter of fact, that in 1921 the
fishermen themselves claim, and that all of them that know their business --mand I want you to get 4hat --
MR. HOGAN:	Yes, I go tit.
MR. SIMS:	(Continuing) -- will tell you that more than fifty
per cent of the run of humpback salmon wenty by or were allowed freedom; and do you still know further that in the fall of 1921 the fall salmon season had closed October 25th and the fishermen themselves claim that the biggest part of the fall run hadn't been stopped; and that not only the traps hut the purse-seines and the gill-nets and every other kind of fishing had stopped?
ICR. HOGAN:	Yes, hut now --
MR. SIMS:	Do you know that is a fact?
MR. HOGAN:	Yes. Do you know it is a fact that you take six and
a half inch mesh and yougo out on the river down aroung by Everett where most of the fishing is done, and you go out and try to catch a humpback in our restricted mesh and you will go hungry for a fish? And thousands have to go, hut they go through. The average catch on Snohomish River is about thirty-five hundred fish for the shole hunch of them, of humpbacks.
And the dog salmon comes after the season is closed, so there ain’t over three or four thousand of them taken in the whole river.
MR. SIMS:	The impression you are trying to give the Board and the
other visitors today is that there are certain people who can fish and fish until all the fish are gone. I tell you that the fishing equipment on the whole of Puget Sound, during the ■seasons of 1921 and 1922, the only two years that this Board had any authority to make regulations -- that fishing was stopped so that of the humpback run fifty per cent escaped, and of the fall run the fishermen themselves claim that fifty per c
42of the fall fish escaped. What more do you want us to do, stop it entirely?
MR. HOGAN:	I have been kind of taking in this situation and taking
in your hatcheries and some of the equipment that is used out in the Bay, and I went out to three different "boats seining out in the Bay. Now, their mesh isn't large enough to let any six-
pound fish through.
MR. SIMS:	What time was this?
MR. HOGAN:	It was during	the first	start	of the dog	run.
MR. SIMS:	Of	course,	it	is	not	so	a six-potind fish can go through,
because that is an under-size fish. If you are acquainted with the business, you should know the small salmon disappear from Puget	Sound not later	than July	20th,	and	you --
MR. HOGAN:	Wait a minute,	I want to tell	you	what I	saw.
MR. SIMS:	All	right,	go	ahead.
MR. HOGAN:	They caught dogs and silvers, and there was in the neigh-
borhood of about two humdred and .fifty small salmon in there.
MR. SIMS:	What	do	you	call	small	salmon?
MR. HOGAN:	They, were about that long. (Indicating)
MR. SIMS:	What do you call "about", what length is that?
MR. HOGAN:	About sixteen or seventeen inches, what would be from ten
inches up.
MR. SIMS:	Did	you	report	it	to	the	county	attorney	that	somebody was
catching fish under size?
MR. HOGAN:	They had them in the net. Here is the idea. When they
pulled them out they had somewhere about five humdred and ten or fifteen fish --
MR. SIMS:	That	is	all	right	about	where they had them.
MR. HOGAN:	I was trying to tell you what happened.
MR. SIMS:	Did you report to the county attorney that you saw fisher-
4242
men catching fish under size? Answer that question.
MR. HOGAN:	Well, now, I didn’t.
MR. SIMS:	All	right.
LIR. HOGAN:	I	will tell you why I didn't.
MR. SIMS:	All	right.
MR. HOGAN:	Now, when they took them up, drawed in their purse
strings and took them up, they were a little too heavy to brail into the main boat you see, so they brought them up as close as they could and pretty near brought them out of the water; they hoisted up the rigging and held them just as hard as they could. I asked why didn’t they pull it up the rest of the way. He said "Liable to bust the bottom out." These little fellows were laying in there with them.
MR. SIMS:	What	time was that?
MR. HOGAN:	I	can’t just place the time.
LIR. SIMS:	Was	it in the fall?
MR. HOGAN:	Yes,	in the fall, on the first start of the dog run.
MR. SIMS:	Last	year?
MR. HOGAN:	Yes,	last year.
MR. SIMS:	What	kind of gear?
LIR. HOGAN:	Purse	seine.
MR. SIMS:	Purse	seine.
LIR. HOGAN:	And	these little ones came in with them, they were in
the bunch, and when they raised this gear up the other fish was all floundering in there, and before they got them into the boat, so that they could raise	the	rest of them up, they throwed	those
little	ones overboard. He says, r’We can't keep them, they	are
dead.”
MR.	SIMS:	You know what the	law	is on destroying fish?
MR.	HOGAN:	Yes, but how are	you	going to foelp it? Only with a	feigg^r
44mesh, let the little follows through. When they came up they didn’t want them, they 3aid "We can't take them, it is against the law", but they are hilled	in there just the	same.	Now,	then,
that is the idea. You had no	grounds to report	to the	prosecut-
ing attorney, or to the fish office, where we should report to, because —
MR. SIMS:	Why not?
MR. HOGAN:	-- the prosecuting attorney	could not	get them there.	I
am figuring he couldn't 3age them fish when that tremendous load was on top of them; the little ones was always mached to death; and that is just the way with	the little fishermen.
MR. SIMS:	Have you anything more	you wish to say?
MR. HOGAN:	Well,	I think I have said enough. I have come right to
the point.
MR. SIMS:	I just want to ask you one question now and then I will
close it. If we were to accede to the demands as to the Stilaguamish and the Snohomish River and the Skagit River, if tha't were to be the policy, in the event we were to accede to those demands, then we should open up all of the other streams in which we had like restrictions, shouldn't we?
MR.	HOGAN:	I should say you	should be fair to	everybody. I	would
not consider it fair to open our river	and	let these	others go,
I wouldn't for a minute, and I feel just the same way in regards to the other fishing. I believe in justice.
MR.	SIMS:	Well, you believe	that there is	a decrease in	the	3almon
at the	present time over	last year,
MR. HOGAN:	I certainly do,	when they put traps like	they do just	in
the mouth of the Skagit	River, right	up close	to	the mouth —
three or four of them right in there and they catch them right within six or seven miles of the mouth of the river, and a fellow
45can't even fish in the river.
MR. SIMS:	Well,	I'm	glad	you	brought	that up, because you have
opened up a new line of thought, which hind of knocks your argument in the ribs a little. Now, the La Conner Chamber of Commerce, in a resolution, and so forth and so on, asks that the State Fisheries Bibard -- or the Governor have the State Fisheries Board look into the question on the river, and set forth their demands as to what they want, to fish in the river and to shorten up these areas. Now. we are going to suppose th that the men who made this request are interested in the welfare of the state, and also in view of the fact that there must be sufficient fish or at least more than sufficient going into the river to spawn and to perpetuate. Then, if that is a fact, what harm are traps doing that are outside, that you are talking about now, if there are more fish going in?
MR.	HOGAN:	What harm? Well,	anybody knows that the trap has got	the
first	whack at it, and he	doesn't have to pay half as much as	the
fishermen does to operate.
MR.	SIMS:	The point is this,	that the La Conner fishermen say to	the
State	Fisheries Board TtWe	want you to open up the Skagit River,
we want to open the area outside of the Skagit River for the purpose of taking fish." They have two things in mind -- they eith%
have in mind the entire destruction of the fish and willing to lend themselves to the destruction, or that there is sufficient or more fish going up that river than are necessary to seed the river. So, if that is a fact, the fellow that is fishing in the waters that you are complaining about certainly cannot be doing harm with the areas as they are.
MR. HOGAN:	The	fishermen	sure	aren't	doing any harm when they are
only fishing six hours a day. They can't fish any more than that*
46d45
And another thing, the men that have been fishing on the river have got all their money tied up in little locations that isn’t able to work just for the simple reason that traps can’t catch them fish and they want them to go to seed so they will have fish for the next year for themselves again. I believe the season should be regulated when there is a big run of fish to come in, let them 6o to spawn. If you want fish to spawn, let them go unrestricted for a certain time and leave the people with the small gear that has been operating for twenty-five or thirty years undisturbed on those location. It only takes four hours to run the gauntlet on the district on the Snohomish River, and they shortened it down and they	agreed	to	everything.
MR.	SIMS:	Mr. Roy Larson or another fisherman	by	the name of	Nelson,
from the Skagit River, on the hearing June 20, 1921, made this statement, that the fish lay in front of the mouths of these rivers as long as thirty or forty days, and the reason the fish didn't go up the stream was that the fishermen could go into those places in front of these rivers and by the time the waters were right in the rivers for the fish to go up, there was no fish there to go up.
MR. HOGAN:	How	would	a	fisherman	live	on	the river if the fish wasn’t
going up?
MR. SIMS:	Do	you	remember who it was?
MR.	NELSON:	It was Mr. Larson. I just	wanted	to	make it plain	at
this hearing that it was not Nelson	made that	statement.
MR. SIMS:	I	am	not	making	the	definite statement. I am making the
statement that there was a fisherman --
MR. NELSON:	Yes,	that is all right, but I just didn’t want to take
the blame for the statement.
MR. SIMS:	No,	I	had remembered that you were ther, but I didn’t
know who it was.
47CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Mr. Hogan, I would like to ask you this question:
How would you know the time to shut dovai sc as to let the fish go up the Snohomish River?
L'!R. HOGAN:	Should	have a regular time to close, not over two weeks.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	You	knov;	there are two weeks go by many a time
during the season that you never caught any fish, practically no fish. How would you know the right time to close off all the fishing? You say you want to close it off outside as well ®s in the river.
MR. HOGAN:	Sure.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	How would you know the right time?
IrR. HOGAN:	Well,	now, there is a very easy way to figure that out.
You fellows have figured out all other scientific propositions right down to a fine point. I think you can figure that, too.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	How do you know when the fish are going to go up
the Snohomish River? You don’t know, because many is the time that you never get any fish, then all at once you get a school of fish, don't you?
MR. HOGAN:	Yes,	sure.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	How would we know when that school of fish was
coming? You didn't know it. It wgs just when the water got right, that the fish wnet in, didn’t they?
MR. HOGAN:	Yes,	hut it is a steady flow of fish.
C/PTAIN RAMf'ELL:	I know it is steady all right enough, hut there
is no living person who knows when that time is coming.
MR. HOGAN:	Yes,	I know.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	The only thing you can do is to let them come up
the channel}
MR. HOGAN:	Well, that is what I say. We can’t even buy a fish or
nothing unless we buy it from a trap, I don’t like to go into
4847
this
MR. SIMS:	Is anybody else fishing on Putret Sound with any other
kind of gear than traps?
MR. HOGAN:	There is, but you can't buy from them. You have got
to go to a wholesale house first before you buy them. The price of fish went up. I bought fish from the Everett Fish Company and resold them again, and when they landed on the dock they were seventeen cents -- the fish company -- and we bought them at sixty cents for dogs. That is the idea. And when the fisherman fishes and he catches the fish, he is tired and ain't got any time to sell them or anything else. Lots of times I have bought fish from Mr. Ramwell. If their boat wouldn't come out to pick up the fish, they would sell them
for anything rather than let them spoil. And that is a great thing to an community, to get cheap food. You always are hollering to get cheap food. Everything has gone out of sight, and the only darn thing they have got left now is fish and lots of potatoes; you can't buy a fish for anything reasonable, nothing less than fifty cents or a dollar, and here they are sixteen, seventeen, twenty cents on the Bay side if you go get them, or you hat1 to row out in the boats ans buy them, and then if you went out there and buy them, then you are go in to work and cheat the Government out of the tax, because those fellows that are running those seine boats, you all know what they are, you have got to go through, buck the line. So I bought mine through the Everett Fish Company.
MR. SIMS:	Mr. Bjorklund, did you want to say something?
MR. BJOREXUND:	He has been talking about a closed season and the time
they were in the river. Say that is the last time of the season,
49if it would be the middles of October, then there would be plenty of fish go up and it would be decent and it would he all right.
Now they are taking -- what time is the opening up now?
MR. SI S; The first of May.
MR. 3JORK1UND:	The	first	of	May?
MR. SIMS:	Yes.
MR. BJORKLUND:	Now, here there would be now September, be the mid-
dle of September the fish begin to run, it will be a month's fishing in the river, and the middle of October will be plenty of fifeh. We fished until November before. Now that is shortened up a month. There would be a big difference. There would be plenty of time and then it will leave free, you know.
50149
172.	STATEMENT OF MR. E. P. ANDERSON.
(La Conner.)
MR. SIMS:	Mr.	Anderson,	state	what you have to say.
MR. ANDERSON:	I was appointed by	the	Commercial	Club of La
Conner to take this	matter up	with the State	authorities,
sometime last January. I am not a fisherman, have no interest in any fishing concern whatever. I am simply a merchant, just appointed by the Commercial Club on their committee.
I went to Olympia with Mr. Vail, sometime in the latter part of January, and we were going to look up the representatives from our county in the legislature and have a talk with them. Went in and registered in the hotel and went down the street, and I was passing a barber shop and I noticed a few parties inside,	and	I said "Wait a	minute, Charlie”,	and I
looked back and	the	Governor's son	was in there, and	he came
out and I spoke to him. He asked us if Dad knew I was in town.
I said "No, I just	came in."	He	said, "You	had better call
him up." I said ”1	might see	him	tomorrow.”	So that when	I
got back to the	hotel I did call him up and he asked	me to
come out to see	him	the next day.	I went out the next morn-
ing and went up and had a talk with him for an hour or two, and I was talking about this fish proposition. He said ”See Sims.” I said,	”1	intend	to see Sims,	that is one thing I
came down here for,	to see	Sims and the	members of the Legis-
lature from our county." And while I was talking with him on Sunday he gave me a letter of introduction to Mr. Sims, and when we finished our visit he said he had nothing to do --that was Sunday morning -- before noon sometime, he said the would walk down	the	street	and maybe we	would find him; and
we started down	the	street	and net Mr.	Sims in company with
51some other gentlemen, I think there were four in the party altogether, and he introduced me to	you.
MR.	SIMS:	Yes, on the corner.
MR.	ANDERSON:	That is the time.	And	I made	a	date with	you	for
that evening, if you remember.
HR. SIMS:	I don't remember of that, but I remember of meeting you
on the corner with the Governor that day.
MR. ANDERSON:	Yes, and then we went down and had a conference
with you on Sunday evening --	Mr.	Vail and	myself --	and	brought
up the matter of this fishing	and	wanted	to know if	some	change
could not be made in the regulation, and as we finished orr conference you made a statement to the effect that your mind was made up on this proposition.
MR. SIMS:	Nov;, .just one minute, Mr. Anderson.
MR. ANDERSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	So that there won't be confusion. Just put in the re-
cord the demands you made at that time, will you, so that it will be all clear? In other words, you asked for something, didn't you*?
MR. ANDERSON:	I asked, for one thing, whether there could be some
change in the regulations as to the fishing within three miles of the mouth of the river.
MR. SIMS:	You wanted the rivers opened up, if you remember.
MR. ANDERSON:	That, is possible, I don't just remember.
MR. SIMS:	I just want to get in here what you said. I was still
of the same opinion, that there should not be any changes that you wnated. In other words, you came to make request that fishermen be allowed to fish in the Skagit.
MR. ANDERSON:	We were taling about Skagit fishing.
MR. SILTS:	Skagit, and that the areas be changed in front of the
5251
rivers.
MR.	ANDERSON:	Yes, in front of the river.
MR.	SIMS:	And	I told you, as far as I was	personally	concerned,
that I was	of the same opinion at that	time	as	when	the	order
was made, of its necessity,and I had nothing in mind of making any change; that is what I told you, practically, didn't I?
MR. ANDERSON:	You spo^e like this, that it would not change your
mind if a thousand fellows came up.
MR. SIMS:	I think that is possibly correct.
MR.	ANDERSON:	That i s wha t you said.
MR. SIMS:	I	am willing to make if two thousand, how.
MR. iNDERSON:	Well, that is all right, sure, that is fair enough.
Then we felt that we could not do anything with the Fisheries Board on that proposition. I went back the next day, Monday morning I went hack to see the Governor and talked it over with him, and before going up there I talked with Bishop. He is the Chairman of the Fisheries Committee.
MR.	SIM S :	In	the	s ena t e .
MR.	ANDERSON:	In	the	senate.	We	talked with	him	that same evening
we talked with you.
MR. SIMS:	Sunday	night.
UR. ANDERSON:	Sunday night, at the Olympia Hotel. And Bishop said
that if we had any kick coming, wanted to get anything through the legislature, to bring the matter up Ifiefore his committee and he would give us a decent hearing. Well, that was fair enough. I told him we were not ready to bring anything before the legislature yet, I didn't know whether we would have to or not.
The next morning we went back and had a talk with the Governor and told	him	what	we	were confronted	with,and I argued with	pro	and	con	on the	proposition,	and	he said
5352
"Well, I know you would not come up here to me with a proposition like thjs unless you were sincere." He says, "Of course, you know enough to know that," and he says, "If your claim is right and you can substantiate it," he says, "I will give you and opportunity to have them change their ruling." He said, "If it is for the best interest of the people of the state, that is the point, but," hes says,"you might be over-anxious and be mistaken.'' I said, "I might	make a mistake. He who	makes no mistakes makes
nothing. He who	makes too many	mistakes	loses his job."	Then
we all went back to the Commercial Club, with the reporter, and this set of resolutions was prepared.
MR. SIMS:	What date was that?
MR. ANDERSON:	That was February 1st, the adoption of the resolution.
MR.	SIMS:	The first	one. There are	two sets, aren’t there?
MR.	ANDERSON:	No, I	think there is	one set,	all at the same	time;
all the same --	February 1st.
MR. SIMS:	Yes.
MR. ANDERSON:	It	was	some time in January when we talked with you,
about two weeks prior to that. I didn’t draw up the resolutions myself, but I was there when they were adopted and I gigned the proposition, for I believed it was the right thing to do. I like to see fairness done in all departments. I think the fishermen ought to have a right --
MR. ^LADE:	Pardon me for butting in just a minute, on the question
on fairness. In your opinion, was it exactly fair to pass the type of resolution that you did pass regarding the meSabers of the Fisheries Board before you had seen them?
MR. ANDSRPON:	Well, I think in the resolution you will find that it
refers to the Chairman, we were talking with the Chairman.
MR. BLAKE:	No	reference made to the Chairman at all.
54MR. ANDERSON:	I think so.
M .	BLAKE:	Not as I	recall them.
MR.	ANDERSON:	Yes.	I have a copy in	my pocket here,	and	I	think
Mr. Sims has a copy of them.
FR. SIMS:	Let	me see that, Mr. Dunlap, please?
CAPTAIN RAMVEIL:	I	think	they	charge	the whole Fisheries Board
just the same there.
MR. AND'vRSON:	No, I think not. It was not the intention.
MR. BLAKE:	Well, that is the difficulty of it.
C TAIN RAMVasLL:	It is what you said, I know that.
MR. BLf.IIE:	There may be a reference in there to the Chaimman, I
would not be positive as to that, hut in the succeeding resolutions the Fisheries Board is held up to or put before the public in rather a serious licht, and that was before you had had any conference with the Fisheries Board other than the Chairman.
MR. ANDERSON:	This resolution was not adopted before we had a conference	with the	Chairman of your	Board.
MR.	BLAKE:	Very true, but there was reference there	to	the	other
members of the Board --
MR. ANDERSON:	Well —
MR. BLAZE:	(Continuing)	--	with	whom	you had no conference. I am
not raising any question as to it, I am siaply asking — you spoke about a spirit of fairness — I merely wanted to know if it was your idea that those resolutions were fair to the other members of the Board,
MR. SIMS:	Here	is what you say;
"That in such petition the Governor be urged to change the personnel of the Fisheries Board so that it will be comprised of open-minded men willing t consider facts with reference to the true protection and propagation of the food fishes of the state and act in accordance with those facts."
55CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	I	think you signed these resolutions without read-
ing them, didn't you?
MR. ANDERSON:	No, they were read all right. I didn't read them my-
self. They were read at the meeting. I didn’t read them out myself.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	A	good	deal	like	Watson -- you figured we were in
the fish trap business
MR. ANDERSON:	We	didn’t	talk	to	the	other	members of the Board, but
the Chairman, at all.
MR. SIMS:	You	rembmber	when	you	were	talking to me, that you were
not talking to me directly in my official capacity, you were talking to	me as a	member a$d as an	individual.
MR.	ANDERSON:	We came	to you as Chairman of the Fishing	Board.
MR. SIMS:	That	may	be true, that you were coming to me as Chairman,
but there are three members and we hold our meetings just as we are holding one today,and I expressed myself not as the State Fish eries Board, I was expressing myself as an individual of the Board, hut	not for	the Board, which	I think you	will	remember.
MR.	ANDERSON:	Well, possibly; possibly	it was so;	I would not	say
one way or the other; I would not be arbitrary on that point.
MR. SIMS:	I haven’t any apologies to make for any statement I made,
but I think the next time I will see no mistake occurs, that when somebody wants to bring before the Board officially a matter, we will have a meeting of the Board , just as we have today.
MR. ANDERSON:	It is possible there was an error there in that case.
I would not say.
MR. BLAhE:	(Reading.)
"We are vitally interested in fish conservation as the permanent existence of our business is substantially dependent upon it. Prohibiting the gill-netter but allowing traps and purse-seines impress our communities with the manifest unfairness of your Fisheries Board which is made up entirely of trppmen or those who have accumulated wealth from the trapping or fish canning industries.”
56t
MR. ANDERSON:	That is possible.
MR. BLADE:	Now,	it is possible,	but	is	it quite	proper	for	you—
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Is it true?
MR. BLAKE:	Have	you any information	that in	any	way,	shap	or	man-
ner I was ever directly or indirectly interested in the fishing business?
MR. ANDERSON:	No, I never had any information, but I always under-
stood Mr. Ramwell and Mr. Sims were interested in the fishing business.
MR. BLAZE:	But this says the entire Board.
MR. ANDERSON:	Well,	I didn't draw the resolution.
MR. BLAKE:	Will, I am merely raising the wuestion as to --
MR. ANDERSON:	I never had met you and I didn't know what your
business was, as far as	that is	concerned,	but	the other two
I had always heard they	were interested in	the	fishing business
more or less.
MR. SIMS:	Mr.	Anderson, coming to that meeting in Olympia --
MR. ANDERSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	You	got Mr. Sisson to have a meeting of the Fisheries
Committee of the House?
MR.	ANDERSON:	No, never did, never	consulted Sisson on that	meeting
proposition.
MR. SIMS:	I don't mean the	general	meeting itself, hut didn't you
ask him, or didn't you	ask it,	Mr. Vail?
MR.	ANDERSON:	No. Sisson said the	House committee came	to him and
wanted him	to appear before the	committee.
MR.	SIMS:	Mr.	Blake, I wish you would put in the record	the	occur-
rence -- the conversation that we had with Mr. Sisson, and the request that he made, and the outcome of the conversation pertaining to the very thing these gentlemen are here for today.
57.56
MR.	BLAKE:	We	were	asked to go to Olympia	to attend a	hearing.
MR.	SIMS:	Who	were	you asked by?
MR. BLAKE:	What?
MR. SIMS:	You were asked by Mr. Sisson, weren't you?
MR.	BLAKE:	We	were	to have a meeting with	Mr.	Sisson,	and Captain Ramwell and myself went to Olympia on	the 8th	of Febru-
ary. After some little delay, Mr. Sisson was located, and we conferred for an hour of two in one of the rooms up there, but we didn't seem to get anywhere. Mr. Sisson didn t seem to be fully clear as to what was to be brought out. He did tell us as you have stated, that in your conference with the Covernor the Governor said that if you could substantiate the claim of injustice and discrimination that you had made there, that he would see that the regulations wece modified.
MR. ANDERSON:	Yes sir.
MR. BLAKE:	However, we talked the matter over for some little
time, and Mr. Sisson expressed himself as not being sufficiently familiar with the actual situation to reach any conclusion,and asked us if we would attend another hearing or another conference, to which we agreed, and the conference was set for Tuesday of the following week* This was about Friday, as I recall it.
MR. SIMS:	Tuesday following Lincoln's birthday. Lincoln's birth-
day was on Monday.
MR. BLAKE:	It was Thursday or Friday. So Mr. Sisson then expressed
himself, as I recall it,as to getting to Olympia the parties —■ and I think you would probably have been one of them -- who were familiar with the situation, so that we could discuss it intelligently. Captain Ramwell and myself agreed to return on Tuesday, to be there for the hearing that Mr. Sisson wanted on Tuesday evening. Monday was Lincoln’s birthday and most of the
5857
legislators were here to attend that Lincoln Day uanquet. In the afternoon Mr, Sisson called me up and wanted to know if it would be unsatisfactory if we called the meeting for Tuesday evening off. I told him not in the least, that I had promised to go to Olympia, but it would have been expressly to attend that conference, and that if they were not prepared to go on with the conference, it was quite satisfactory to call it off. And asked him why. He said "Because the pople who want to meet you there are not prepared with the dope.” I told him all right, I would make it my ‘business to acquaint Captain Ramwell of the fact that they desired the meeting postponed, for which he thanked me, and	I then extended	to	him an invitation to	arrange for a meeting subsequently.	As	I recall it
now, it	was to be after the	adjournment of the	Legislature,
so that	the people would be	more free, but,	at	all events, it
was to be subsequent to that Tuesday, and told him that any time he could get his people together and they were prepared 4. 39	with the data that they desired to have with them to let the
Board know a few days in advance and we would endeavor to get together, because we are not here, as you know, all the time.
MR. ANDERSON:	Sure.
MR. BLAKE:	That is the last I heard of it. That is all I know
about it. The next I knew about the affair was when the Governor desired a caonference, and I was at my home or my farm. I came back here expressly to participate in the conference that the Governor asked, at which time they presented us with this file of matter. Whereupon I wrote, at his suggestion, to Mr. Kearns, I think, the Secretary of your club, and this meeting is the result of it.
So far as I am personally concerned, I know nothing of the
59be
situation, I know nothing of the wishes, desires or objections of the people of La Connefc, except as I have related to you; and I did not know, until I went to Olympia to attend the conference that Mr. Sisson desired, that you people had bee there in conference with the Governor, except that in the newspapers I was highly delighted to read your resolutions.
MR. ANDERSON:	Your	obituary.
MR. BLAhE:	And	I have	heard nothing since that.
MR. SIMS:	That	covers	the meeting	business, I thing.
MR. ANDERSON:	That is	all of that	case, yes.
MR. SIMS:	Now,	do you	want to say	anything further	than what the
resolution and petition called for?
MR. ANDERSON:	Oh,	I	don't know particularly. -I am not a fisherman
and I don't know the game, only through observation, but as near as I can figure, the main shortage in the salmon of Puget Sound is in the	sockeye variety. .1 have	talked	with	a number of	gill-
met ter s and trapmen and	they seem to be of the	opinion that	the
salmon is practically us plentiful as ever, except the sockeye variety. That is what I get just in talking with them. I have no figures on it.
MR. BLAKE:	Would	the	pack of Puget Sound, as shown in the trade
journals, have any effect on that belief?
MR. ANDERSON:	That might have, yes. I may be mistaken on that, "but
that is what I get in conference with these different men I have talked to, from the people who own traps.
MR. SIMS:	How	long	have you lived at La Conner?
MR.	ANDER°ON:	For the last	40 years.
'R.	''IMS:	In	1906 I bought	the entire	catch,	that	is, Captain	Willey
and I in partnership -- the entire catch of the Skagit River, north and south fork of the Stilaguamish,and the Snohomish Rivers. I think you know, from your own observation of the number of
6Cr
fishermen there today and	the number of	fish that are	caught,
that there certainly is a	depletion of the fish. Mr.	Larson,
in his statement of June 2Gth, 1921, kind of got "between two points, that is, "between thirty and forty per cent decyease, but whether that is correct or not I don’t know.
I.IR.	ANDERSON:	There nay be a	decrease, for	all I know.
MR.	SIMS:	That there are not	the fish that	there were in	years be-
fore.
MR. ANDERSON:	In	1919	there	was somethin like eight million
fish caught in Puget Sound waters. In IHO there was about two million and a half, or something like that.
MR. SIMS:	That	is	just the point exactly.
MR. '\NDERSON:	You	can't	tell from one year to another, because
they vary.
MR. SIMS:	The	trouble	is	you are trying to correspond a year with
another year that don't follow at all.
MR. ANDERSON:	That	may	be.
MR. SIMS:1919 was a humpback year. If you want to correspond that year you want to take 1917, 1119, 1921, and 1922.
MR. ANDERSON:	Sure.
MR. 6IMS:	The	odd	years	are	humpback year. Now, in 1920 will com-
pare with 1916, 1924, 1912, 1908. As far as our fish are concerned, the humpbacks are on the odd years. So it is not a fair comparison.
MR. ANDERSON:	But my statement is this, that with talking with the
trapmen arid the gfcll-netters who are operating on the inside of the pass, I have heard them make the statement that there is no apparent shortage in the fish during the last, say, ten or fifteen years; that the run might come along next year and be just the same as it was in 1912 or 1913 or I909 or something of that kind. Now, whether that is correct or not I don’t know,oe
61d6O
cause I never --
UR.	SIMS:	The	record will	not hear out that statement.	There are
records on	that point,	so there is no	use in our arguing about
that.	The records will	show that his --
MR. ANDERSON:	That has nothing to do with the ease, I am sure.
The main issue at stake is, it seems to me -- from an outsider --that the gill-netters should have the same privilege to fish as the yurse-seiner or the trapraan or any other kind of gear.
MR. SIMS:	Don’t you think he hs that?
MR. ANDERSON:	Well, no. He may have it, in a way, yes, hut he can't
operate successfully outside with his gill-net.
MR.	SIMS:	You	are sure of	that, are you?
MR.	ANDERSON:	He may up in the Marrietta	country, up in	that dis-
trict, or in somenplace.
MR.	.SIMS:	During my period	of fishing, they used	t confine themselves	-- the gill-nets	-- to Boundary Bay and	the lower part of
the Gulf of Georgia. The Gulf used to he full of them. Ag the fish became scarcer, they came futher south, and you will find gill-netters now drifting from Iceberg Point down as far as off Discovery Island, off Victoria.
CAPTAIN RAMY/EEL:	Yes,	and	getting	lots	of	fish.
MR.	SIMS:	And, as a matter	of fact, they are more	successful -- I
am now	talking as to the class of equipment in	relation one to
another -- even more successful than they were up in the Gulf, and the gill-netters even are operating off Caoe Flattery, and they are fishing with gill-nets in every part of Puget Sound, in the salt waters, wherever there is fish to catch.
MR. ANDERSON:: Where there is room for them.
MR. SIMS:	Wherever it happens to he, where the fish will gill.
There are places, now, that they will nlbt gill at all. Of course,
62there are places you may r o out with a purse-seine and never get a salmon. They are in certain places and in those places any kind of gear that can be put in the water will catch fish; some more efficiently than others, of course.
HR. ANDERSON:	I have one fisherman in mind, who told me that he
fished in Scandanavian waters and the big lakes of our country -the Great Lakes; he operated a trap for another man for a year or two; he fished on a purse-seine boat, and he trolled outside of Neah Bay, and he trolled in Alaska; the last fishing he did was with a gill-net. He had worke d in all the different departments of the game. And he said the same thing confronted the people of the Scandanavian country as confronts this country right now, and this state and Alaska, and he told me that the way they regulated it back there was to eliminate the traps, t don't know whether that is the correct nethod or not, or
whether it would be possible to do that, and 2 would not want
to ask you to do anything of that kind on my sayso, or anything like that.
IfR. BLAKE:	Speaking	of traps just a moment; How many traps are
there operating, if you know, on Puget Sound, that are operating on the fish that would go into the Skagit River?
LIR. ANDERSON:	Weill;	possibly just now West Beach and inside of
Deception Pass and if there is any down around Whidby Island I don't know.
MR. BLAKE:	Well, considerable stress has been laid on the fact
that the take of the gill-netters is five per cent of the take of Puget Sound. Would you figure that the traps located north of a point where the fish enter the waters right off the rivers would have any effect upon the fish in those rivers?
*.TR. ANDERSON:	Well,	I don't know as to that.
-fR. BLAKE:	Well, it would be reasonable to suppose, would it not,
62>2
that it would not effect them?
MR. ANDERSON:	The	traps	on the north, you mean north, Fidalgo
Island or what?
MR. BLAZE:	Fish	do	not	go	back.	When they start traveling north
they continue traveling north, so that the only traps that would effect the Skagit River fish would be the traps to the south of Deception Pass. Is that no logical?
MR. ANDERSON:	Well, that is what I said in my statement, that I
presumed they were the ones that would effect the catch, West Beach or Whidby Island --
MR. BLAKE:	Then	the	take	of the gill-netters is greater than five
per cent of the take of the traps that effect those fish. The traps north of Fida|go Island certainly cannot effect the Skagit River fish.
MR. ANDERSON:	But	that	five per cent is not only the Skagit River,
that five per cent includes the Snohomish and Skagit, the Marrietta district, Bellingham, all of Puget Sound, all the gill-netters on Puget Sound take five per cent of the fish, while the other gears take ninety-five per cent, approximately. That is according to your fish commission's report.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Yes, and when you are talking about ninety-five
per cent, you are talking about the sockeyes that don't go in the rivers.
MR. ANDERSON:	Sure	.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	But	you	figure just what go in the river and you
will find that you get the big majority of them.
MR. SIMS:	I	am	going	to	read you just a few excerpts from our friend
Larson, on June 20th, 1921. The impression that is thrown out here amongst some of the gentlemen who are not acquainted with the trap situation is that all traps are successful.
MR. ANDERSON:	I	know	better than that.
646S
MR. SIMS:	So I asked Larson:	"How long have you fished in the
Skagit River? A. About eighteen years, I fished every
since I was fifteen years old. I fished for twenty-seven
years. I had traps out there and lost them, went broke."
Now, what he was referring to was the flat. I just want
to read you one other little portion here. I had asked Mr.
Larson about the number of gill-netters that were in the
river, and he stated the number; As to how many there were
in the organization, and he said aboat 125.- And I asked
him, I said "They all have licenses? A. Yes, but they
are not all fishing nowa Dome are gone away, some were
starved out and went down on the Columbia River* They were
starved out and we are getting starved out every day.” Now,
I know that to be and actual statement of fact. We have other
statments from other sections in which the same remark has been
made as this.
I MR. HOGAN:	How	does	it	come	they	all	starve	out up in that part
of the country?
MR. SIMS:	You	will	have	to ask Mr. Larson. I am just quoting
his statment.
MR. HOGAN:	And there is one thing I wanted to say, that we talking to Mr. Cobb:	His	idea of propa0ating the fish now is just
to propagate humpbacks and dog salmon, and the river fishermen practically don’t take any of them, and I don’t see v;hy opening the river --
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	When you are talking about ninety-five per cent
of the fish, though, you figure in the humpbacks and the dogs, that you donf£ take, and the sockeyes too.
MR. HOGAN:	Yes.
CAPTAIN RAMVJELL:	That	is	how	you	get	your	ninety-five xoer cent,
too.
6564
MR. HOGAN:	And	the point we were trying to get at is the com-
munity, the people. The idea is this; Your nets are shoved away out in the bay, away out to Victoria or out -- I don't know, any place, and you can’t get them in to the people.
The fishermen that	fish in the river, the	people	can huy this
cheap food. There	is thousands of people	right around the
city that has got to vuy them third and fourth handed, and everybody makes a profit on it. The idea is to have fishing where the people ct n get them. Any time you have got to go to work and pay from seventy-five cents to a dollar for a dog salmon, you are paying too much, and all these sales that are run on these fish markets, that is put up, take silver salmon fifty cents and the smallest "dogs” are picked out of the whole hunch and sold at fifty cents. That is the idea. I have been in this fishing game and know, and I have been in all there towns and visited these markets. And you take and charge	fifty cents for	small --
MR.	SIMS:	That is already	in he record.
MR. HOGAN:	I	know.
MR. SIMS:	Mr.	Anderson, will you please look at this map. I don't
think you looked at this.
MR.	ANDERSON:	I think	I looked at it in your	office	at Olympia.
MR.	SIMS:	Just let me	ask you this question:	If we	were to allow
the demands that have been put forth here today and other times to open the particular rivers you mention, shouldn't we, in all fairness, do likewise as to the other streams?
MR. ANDERSON:	I	think they should all be treated alike, yes.
MR.	SINS:	All right, now.	In making	these areas	and	closing these
rivers	as you see them	marked here	do	you consider	that	any dis-
crimination over the other streams of the state has been made, any preference given them as against the river you represent?
66dG5
MR. ANDERSON:	I don't see any preference given, no.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Yet you said this Board was unfair and were not
open-minded. You made that statement in your resolution.
MR. ANDERSON:	Well, that might have been made there, yes, but I
believe they are unfair in this way -- in the closing of one kind of gear that it is very hard to operate outside in deep wa ters.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Oh,	no.
MR. ANDERSON:	In some places it is, in stormy weather, with the
boats they have. They are operating in an open boat and they only drift from the mouth of the river down -- maybe a little further up than the mouth of the river -- and I believe that they should be treated with the same fairness that every other gear is. My idea is to make and open season, for your purse-seines, your traps and your gill-nets and all fishing gears, of four or five or six days out of a week, and have one, two or three days closed for all gears, and then you will be treating them all alike, and I believe the fish would come up and replenish the supply.
'MR. SIMS:	It is all right for you to have your own ideas. But if
you will look around and study the situation and see how you can adjust nature and fit all conditions to meet nature --
MR. ANDERSON:	Pretty	hard.
MR. SIMS:	(Continuing) -- you will be doing things that a lot of
people have done a lot of studying on. And you understand the regulations closing the rivers and these areas, all kinds of fishing has been prohibited, there has been no particular special gear picked out and descriminated against as to another.
MR. ANDERSON:	Why don't you close the traps and purse-seiners and
gill-nets for one entire season, or half a season, or some-
6766
thing of that kind, end experiment?
MR. SIMS:	Please answer the question, Mr. Anderson; taking into
consideration the chart as you see it, the areas, and, as you know, the areas are closed, isn't it a fact that the regulations apply to every kind and character of gear in closing, in restricting them?
MR. ANDERSON:	And	you close, now, there at the mouth of the
Skagi t.
MR. SIMS:	I	am	talking	about	inside of closed areas.
MR. ANDERSON:	Yes.
MR.	SIMS:	Not the Skagit or any	place.	I	mean	they	can’t	fish
inside	of	that area.
MR. ANDERSON:	There is one fishes mighty close	to the area.	I
doubt that	it does inside the area. I don't	know that it	is
on the outside or inside.
MR.	SIMS:	If	it is in the area,	you	can	stop	it.	You	can	submit
it to	the	county attorney.
fR. ANDERSON:	I don’t know that that is inside.
MR. SIMS:	If	it is inside, that is up to you folks, and all you
have to do is to control it.
MR. ANDERSON:	But	for practical purposes it might just as well
be inside. All the traps inside of the $>ass and all those on the outside, Whidby Island, and West Beach, have the same relation as the gill-netters to the Skagit River, in my estimation
MR. SIMS:	You	understand that wherever we have a closed area,
that all kinds of gear is prohibited from fishing -- you understand that, in the same place?
MR. ANDERSON:	Yes,	presumed.
FR. SUS:	We	don't	allow one kind of gear to fish as against anothe r
king.
MR. ANDERSON:	I	presume that is the idea of the regulation, yes.
6667
'7	STATEMENT	OF	C. C. NELSON.
>9	.
(Mount Vernon)
MR. SIMS:	Mr.	Nelson, what have you to say to the Board today?
MR. NELSON:	I	was sent up here by the fishermen and people of
Mount Vernon. We had a petition out and sent through Mount Vernon. I haven’t heard anything of it, so I 6uess you haven't anything of it either. It was signed by our people up at Mount Vernon, asking the Board to try to change it some way so it would allow an amount of fishing on the river like we used to have.
MR. SIMS:	You presented it to Sisson, did you?
MR. NELSON:	Yes, we sent it to him.
MR. SIMS:	Did he ever present that to us?
MR. BLAKE:	What?
MR.	SIMS:	He never has presented it to	us, has he?
MR.	BLAKE:	I don't remember it.
MR. NELSON:	That is, it was signed by the most prom'nent people
of the town there. They all felt that —
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	He	had	that	petition in his picket in Olympia.
I guess he has got it yet.
MR.	SlfS:	Mr. Sisson came to me a	good	many times during	the	session, discussing the questions	th t	we are discussion	her	to-
day, and he wanted to have a meeting of the Fisheries Committees, joint committee of the Senate and the House, on this question, and, as a matter of fact, we had arranged and did arr-nge for a meeting on some particular night -- I can’t remember the date now — and Hr. Sisson came to me and told me that he felt that hh was expected to attend at that meeting and got Id not or would not be there, and had the meeting called off. Now, as a matter
69L66
of fact, Hr. Sisson was a member of the Fisheries Committee in the House, and, so far as I know, attended every meeting of the Fisheries Committee, and could have had any other meeting that he wanted, and could have had anybody appear before that committee that wanted to appear. We never have refused anybody a hearing in Olympia or before the Fisheries Committee, at least as long as I have been a meinber of it, and I don't know why he didn't have the meeting that possibly you expected him to have.
MR. NELSON:	The citizens, we left it for him to take it up witl
the proper people, and maturally that would be your or your Board here.
MR. SIMS:	The chances are that is the meeting that he arragged
with Mr. Blake.
MR. NELSON:	Consequently,	when we haven’t heard anything frcm it
at all, we thought it was ©ither put in the waste basket or forgotten or something.
HR1 SIMS:	We never had it, and the chances are that what he had
in mind, Mr. Nelson, was the very meeting	that he	was arrang-
ing with Mr. Blake about that time.
MR. ANDERSON:	That is where we got the wires crossed with our
proposition, too, isn't it?
MR. SBAS:	He discussed that, too.
MR. ANDERSON:	I	never knew anything of	the	meeting he	had arranged
with you, on February 12th or 15th.
MR. BLAKE:	The day after Lincoln'5 birthday.
MR. ANDERSON:	We were in Seattle on the l£th. I met Sisson and he
said something about a meeting, and I said I didn’t know snything about a meeting. I never arragged any meeting.
... SIMS:	Possibly that is the meeting he had in mind.
70
*69
MR. ANDERSON:	That is probably it.
MR. SILIS:	I was under the impression, and I euess Mr. Blake and
Captain Ramwell were, that the whole general proposition, that you had discussed it -- and Mr. Vail, and that he had discussed this other, and so I was under the impression that what he was going to discuss was the general river situation.
MR. ANDERSON:	That	is	where	the	wires crossed.
MR. NELSON:	Mr.	Knutson	had	that	petition	in his desk in Olympia,
in the Legislature. The petition there was with something like five humdred names on it.
MR. VAIL:	I would like to say how that came about, I came down
here to Seattle, on my way to Olympia, and met Mr. Anderson here in Seattle on the 10th	or 11th	of February. We	were	on
the way to Olumpia, but in the	meantime it came	out	that	the
Governor -- we were going to see the Governor on the proposition -- it came out in the papers that the Governor was away, so I telephoned up to Mr. Anderson that the Governor was not home and I didn't know when he would he home. Mr. Anderson came doian, anyhow, that Sunday afternoon, and	we	told	Mr.	Sisson
that we knew nothing about this meeting,	we	were	not	ready for
any meeting. And so he said "Well, I will get hold of Mr.
Blake and call it off." And later th t evening I saw Mr.
Sisson and he said he had arranged to call the meeting off.
And that petition was sent to Mr. Knutson and Mr. Knutson turned it over to Mr. Sisson.
MR. SIMS:	Mr.	Knutson was	a member of the Legislature.	Of course,
that was all right. We never had a copy	of	either of the
petitions. The only one we had was the one	that	was	published in
the paper.
MR. VAIL:	And	the	reason	why	I	supposed	Mr.	Sisson	didNbt present
71d 70
that resolution or petition, T . Anderson and I had told IT*. Sisson that we were not ready'.
MR. 1JELSON:	Anyhow,	the	petition	was	endorsed	hy	the	Mou$t
Vernon Commercial Club and also by --MR. SIMS:	What did they ask for in the petition?
MR. NELSON:	I don’t know as I can say absolutely the wording,
but that we would get a right to fish under a restriction something like that the other gears are fishing on. Something like that. That would be the meaning of it, anyhow. That is, on the outside. The feeling in the district around Mount Vernon or Skagit County is -- Now, I don't want to say that you folks are doing anything wrong, you are doing what you think is right and probably is right -- but the X^eople - up there feel that it is injustice somewhere. Tnat feeling is that they used to could go to the river and get their fish at wholesale prices, while they have got to go to the market, and you know as well as I do what the dirrerence is in the price of food when delivered to the people through a market.
And another thing that people think is this, that you ‘ have stopped no other gears absolutely from fishing as you have gill-nets. I have heard arguing back and forward here that the gill-nets can go out and fish outside. Now, I don't deny that they can, but you know as a practical fisherman --you made a statement one time as a gill-netter, that you gill-netted -- you know, as a practical man that when you get outside a certain area of the mouth of the river, that it is very limited -- the gill-net fishing that can be done profitably. MR. SIMS:	Mr. Nelson, the profitable fishing and the only gill-
hetting I have done in front of any river was in the Fraser
72River. As a matter of fact --
MR. NELSON:	Just	outside.
MR. SIMS:	The only fishing and the sain bulk of the business, as
you anow, is exactly in front of the Fraser River, right on the flats.
ICR. NELSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	Even extending down as far as Point Roberts.
MR. NELSON:	As far down as you get fresh water.
MR. SIMS:	And	extending	north	as far as Howe Sound.
MR. NELSON:	Yes.
MR. SIMS:	In	1917	I	ran	though	a	fleet	of them off Nanaimo.
MR. FELSON:	I	know you know all about it. You know that it is on
account of the water you get out of the Fraser, that makes it possible.
CAPTAIN RAlFf ELL:	Yes,	and	when	you	get	away over at Nanaimo and
Howe Sound, you don’t get the Fraser River current.
MR. NELSON:	And	when you get outside in the salt water in the
Sound, it is almost impossible, you can take some certain fish that is feeding, like we usod to get feeding springs, that springs were feeding in the salt water and they were feeding on the little fish and getting caught in the nets in hunting
and and pursuing the small ones; it was not vecause they could not see the nets, but it was because in the mad scramble for food they just got caught.
MR. SIMS:	I	will	tell	you,	I	remember	when the first gill-net
came down to Aleck Bay. As a matter of fact, there were five of them, .and all us fellows that had been gill-netters kind of laughed up our sleeves, predicted failure, never believing that they could actually successfully gill-net in the open waters of the Sound, in the clear water, where the water was not muddy. But to our surprise, they were just the opposite, they were an entire success; and right today you will find gill72
netters in every bay on Lopex Island and on San Juan Island -~ that is, making their headquarters -- fishing in the salt waters of the straits from Iceberg Point clean down as far as Duiigeness
and clean down as far as Victoria.
MR. NELSON:	For sockeye.
yIR. SIMS:	For	sockeyes,	yes. I don't know that all of them fish
there for fall fish. I haven't been in the business along the salmon oanks for a good many years; I quit in 1917, and I don't know what they are doing; but I know those gill-netters that are fishing for sockeyes out there really are doing better than the fellows in Boundary Bay, because Mr. Smiley, who you know used to catch nothing but gill-net fish and whose institution used to be in — what is the name of the bay?
A VOICE:	Birch Bay.
MR. SIMS:	Birch Bay used to be his headquarters, and these were his
fishermen that came down below. Of course, there is another thing that happened, they changed the color of the twine and there h.s been a Jaig improvement in all these different things.
The gear itself has changed, and the methods of fishing have changed so much that our old ideas absolutely have to be discarded; because I will admit that I used to be of the same opinion that you are, that when you left the rivers or got away from muddy water, that the gill-net was absolutely useless; but that is not so.
MR. VAIL:	You stated that the 'five-inch mesh inside of the Pass --
that is where it is allowed that had to be used; of course they use it outside.
MR. sIMS:	It is used where you see these lines, starts in with
Deception Pass and crosses up here at Bush Point, all waters south of that.
7473
MR. VAIL:	You stated that would let a six-inch fish go through.
MR.	SIMS:	A six-pound	fish.
UR.	VAIL:	A six-pound	fish. I can't see	how a	six-pound	fish
could go through a	five--inch mesh.
MR. SIMS:	T hat is just the trouble. There are a lot of things
that we can’t see,	but you can see if	youwant to	see.	Three
different times we	visited the Meadow	Point	trap	and we vatehed
the fish, and if you talk to Mr. Grahmn -- Hugh Grahmn, or his uncle, I can’t remember which it is, he will tell you exactly what sixe fish, because they were there and watched the fish, themselves, and saw them, and I saw them going through the gear myself. You can go and see it yourself, you don’t have to take my word for it at all.
MR. VAIL:	You stated that it let all the sockeyes or blue-backs
go into the Skagit River through this five-inch mesh. I can’t see how they get through it. After that time that they were fishing, they were selling their fish by the pound, they were getting so much a pound for them. They throwed in blue-backs, if they caught any, in among the Tyee salmon and weighed them.
9	When they got the total weight, they divided by SO --
MR. SIMS:	I have talked to the fishermen inside of the Pass. I
haven't looked the records up, but the records are here and you can see them just as well as I can at the Fish Commissioner’s office or the Fish Supervisor's office; and the statement made to me by Mr. Seaborg it that the catch of sockeyes this last year, which was the year when the five-inch mesh was put into effect, was practically negligible.
MR. VAIL:	I know it was.
MR. ") IMS:	And the fishermen told me, themselves, that the sockeyes
went right through the mesh as though the mesh wssn't there at
7574
all.
I'R. VAIL:	My idea is that they caught them, caught those sock-
eyes, weighed them up as Tyee salmon and divided by thirty pounds --
MR. SIMS:	You know they don't do that, because, in the first
place, we will say the fishermen sell to the San Juan Fishing & Packing Company; the San Juan Fishing & Packing Company, in addition to the catcher of the fish, makes a report; neither one knows what the report is, and he reports the person he bought the fish from, the number of fish and the kind of fish.
MR. VAIL:	They	weigh them, they are altogether.
MR. SIMS:	That	may be true, that different kinds may be, but
when they get to Mister San Juan or Mister-some-other fish company, those fish are recorded, the kind of fish that they are.
A VOICE:	What is the standard of mesh for sockeyes?
MR. SIMS:	5f .
A VOICE:	The average sockeye	is seven pounds.	There is an extra
three quarters added onto	Ikhat, and	I tell	you	they catch pretty
near all of them sockeyes.
MR. SIMS:	I have fished on the Fraser River. You can't tell me
anything about the Fraser	River.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	Yes, I have	fished on	it myself;	gill-netted
there, too.
MR. NELSON:	I want to ask the Board to try to do a little for us -
for the people there, so that they would have a right to fish in a limited way, in a way that there would not be any hindrance to the salmon in destroyihg them, as there would not be under proper operation, and that would give the people of that com-
76munity cheap food; and also the people is used to enjoy the privilege of fishinL, the same as the other business men is, whether he be a logger or a farmer or a tugboat man or steamboat man or any other thing that his business would not be taken away from him.
MR. SIMS:	Will	you	look	at	this chart, Mr. Nelson? I don't know
whether you h- ve ever seen this or not.
MR. NELSON:	Yes, I know it.
MR. SIMS:	I just want to ask one question now, or two questions.
In your judgment, has there been any discrimination made against any of the rivers inside of the Pass, or the Snohomish River, as compared with the other rivers or areas of Puget Sound?
MR. NELSON:	Not directly, but indirectly.
MR. SDTS:	Tell me why indirectly; why you are discriminated
against, let's say as to Hoods Canal?
MR. NELSON:	Well, it is this way, that if you will treat all
streams accordingly, where it would be absolutely destroying every fish, fishing the mouth of one stream it would be all right in another, according to the size. If you have a creek that is probably 50 feet across and you allow fishing in that stream, it will catch the fish. Now, if you take the Skagit or Snohomish -- there is the two biggest streams -- why, even with all the gill-netting we do, there is only a limited number of fish but what goes by anyhow.
MR. SIMS:	What particular stream, now, do you think we have dis-
criminated against; which river, now, what stream do we cive any advantage over your river?
777G
MR.	NELSON:	Well, I don’t	say	that you have given	any	other
stream an	advantage, I	say	the contrary, but I	say	accord-
ing to if we use sense in regard to fishing, we can’t take one stream and consider it alongside of another and you can't take one of these areas on the Sound and consider it with another, because one place on the Sound there is unlimited fish and another place on the Sound there is no fish.
MR.	SIMS:	If	you will look at	the chart, you will	see	that the
very idea	that you are	expounding has been carried	out. If
you will examine the areas in front of the four streams and look at the other areas, you will notice that there are different sized areas covering different sections of the Sound, which meet the conditions or situation that you are trying to take into consideration. Isn't that a fact?
MR. NELSON:	Well, I will admit -- As*1 said before, I don’t
want to maek any charges against the Board or feel that you are discriminating against us.
MR. SIMS:	We	understand that.
MR. NELSON:	But I just want to bring up that I think that the
Board could allow a certain amount of fishing on them two big streams without destroying or in any way interfering with the run of fish. Now, before your orders wnet into effect on the Skagit or the Snohomish River, there was as much fish as there was on the White River and the Puyallup River and any of the other rivers that have been protected for years. Why was there as many fish? Because they were bigger streams and they could not be controlled like they were on them other places.
MR. SIMS:	That	was not the reason. The reason -- and that was
78d 77
15S639
a mistake that was made from the lack of experience -- I will be frank in saying that when we closed the rivers, which practically was done as a whole in 1909, if you will remember v/e thought we had accomplished absolutely perfect perpetuation of the fish, and what developed? Just as Mr. Larson and -I don't know --	maybe you may	have	said -- but	others	at the
meeting of June	20, 1921, stated that the	fish	lay in	front
of the mouths of these rivers and as a matter of fact it was not protection, because the fish laid there, the waters were not right and they world nsjt gos*up and jtb.€$ were caught, so there were none to go up.. .So - the next: thing jid.^&o was to ex-
>	.	,	,	’	j »	,	) ,	>	>	> j	J
tend that area where' the fish	were	laying	and protect	them.
You will find that the very streams that you say are not "built up, for instance we can take the White River and the Green River, every place, since these areas have been made in front of the rivers, every one of the	streams,	the	salmon going
up those streams have been increased,	v/e can't	say	to	what ex-
tent. And I just remembered the name of the fellow that wrote from Hoods Canal. You can correspond	with him	if you	wish. His
name is Albert Pfundt. He made the statement that	he	never
wanted to see Hoods Canal opened again, although he bitterly opposed it when it was made; that in his opinion it was going to be an absolute success for perpetuation of fish in Puget Sound. And we have had statements from other people along this same line.
MR. NELSON:	That	practically corresponds with what I mea. But
here is another thing in regard to the Skagit and the north fork there. Mr. Larson says, and you claim thAt these fish --I don't know if you claim it, but some fisherman -- that some fish lays out there and wait. Now, as a matter of fact,
79l78
at the north fork they don't lay there. At low tide the water is out to the leads of the traps.
MR. SII.TS:	They go hack out in the Sound, of course.
MR. NELSON:	Yes, but the trap is right up th the sand. It is
an easy matter for the trap to get them, or they stay on dry ground, or what the deuce are they going to do?
MR. SIMS:	Don't you think the answer to that proposition is the
fact that they have already increased? I f your own statement was correct, I would say "Yes, it isn't worth a snap,’’ but the fact is to the contrary, because every stream where there has been an area has increased in the quantity of fish that have gone up the stream since we m de those areas.
SR. NELSON:	Of course, there can't be any doubt in any man's
mind, because there would be an increase. But my idea is this:	Why not let them other fellows take a little bit
less than they do take, and let us take a little bit? We don't take none now, not a darned thing, as you know. When this order came out, if you had just sent out and order "We stop all fishing from say the first to the tenth of every month from May to November", there would not one fisherman of the gill-netters anyhow, — well, they might kick, but they would have nothing to kick about if they were treated just the same as the rest of them. They would abject to it as the other fellows would, but when the time came to catch the fish they would have the same opportunity. If you would limit these other gears a little bit -- I don't want to tell you how much or how little or anything, but if you would cut them down so that they got ten percent less than they are catching now, say that all the gears outside - you could limit them in a certain way and let us take say five per cent, we
80d79
are still five per cent ahead.
MR.	SIMS:	Mr. Nelsnn , if we were	to follow the requests	made
by you	and the other	gentlemen	who are her$, and in ac-
cordance with the petition, and open these areas and streams, we should open the other streams of the state, If we are	going to have	a defined	policy, shouldn't we?
MR.	NELSON:	Absolutely;	you don®t	follow the same policy	on	the
Columbia as you do up here.
FR. SIMS:	Now, just one minute. You are mistaken as to the
Columbia. Every stream that is tributory or that this Fisheries Board has any power over on the Washington side of the Columbia, is closed to fishing; there is no stream that is tributory to the Columbia River that there is any fishing done in.
MR. NELSON:	I mean to say that the regulations are not the same,
that is, in general, on the Columbia and here, and it is not the same on Grays Harbor and here.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	The	Columbia River itself?
MR. NELSON:	I have seen fishing here and I have seen it on the
Yukon, I have seen it around the Alaskan coast, I have fished on the Yukon sixteen hu ndred miles above St, Michaels, below Dawson, between Dawson and Forty Mile. I want to tell you about that. If the fish left the mouth of the river at the same time a steamboat did, if we didn't have fish two days before the steamboat came	up we would have them two days	after,
but that is within, the	limit. It used to be said all	the	time
in regard to our taking	the fish that the fishwas worn
traveling from the salt	water, that we had so much chance	on	it.
Well, now, those fish traveled sixteen humdred miles, or whatever it is, it may be fourteen humdred miles, on the
6180
same speed that the steam boat traveled. Now, wouldn't they travel fifteen miles or twenty miles as fast as the --
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	They must have had lots of "ginger" in them
when they were born up there, because that condition doesn't work out with the fish on the Columbia River, for instance — the very river that you were speaking about --because the fish that pass into the Columbia at one time will be two months getting up through into Idaho.
MR. NELSON:	It	may fro them, but you must remember that from
St. Michaels to Dawson is pretty deep water.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	I	am glad you brought up the Grays Harbor
question,and these different rivers. I want to tell you something sc that you will know it. We put dozens traps out of business; in those same places where they had traps up in the rivers, we shut them all out to a dead-line below, and have closed those traps up down in Willapa the same way, the Nemah River the same way; lots of traps down there that went out of business. You are saying we didn't do anything but knock out the gill-netter.
MR. NELSON:	No,	I didn't say that. I didn't make that statement.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	We protected every river in the state.
MR. NELSON:	I	didn't make that statement.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	It didn't make any difference whether it was
a gill-net or a trap.
MR. NELSON:	I	didn’t make the statement that --
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	I thought somebody did here.
MR. dTELSON:	I didn't. But, anyhow, it would not make much dif-
ference, anything I could say, and only, as I said before, that if is not my sentiments I am telling here, it is the people there in the petition, that you will realize they believe that
82bl
they are not fairly treated. I thank you.
MR. SIMS:	Does anybody else want to say anything that they have
overlooked?
MR. ANDERSON:	Talking	about discriminating between rivers, T
think there is discrimination between the Skagit River and the Snohomish River, for instance. You say, don't you, that the fish will lay several weeks out by the mouth of the river before going up?
MR. SIMS:	No,	I	didn’t	say that. I said that in the hearing the
evidence --
UR. ANDERSON:	You	made	that statement to me in Olimpia, I think,
at the office; I think you made the same statement.
MR. SIMS:	I made the statement that evidence in hearings that
we had -- it is this one here -- was that that was the habit of the fish.
MR. ANDERSON:	If that is true, there certainly is discrimination
between the Skagit River and the Sxichomish River, because the traps are down at the mouth of the Skagit hiver and the
Snohomish River ------ that is, the north fork of the Skagit, at
low tide^I ean take a pair of boots and walk pretty nearly out to the fish trap; so that when the tide is low the fish are all out there in the trap. With the fish swimming around there for a week or two or thirty days, the fish trap will get them. There is discrimination there.
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	What	do they do with them?
MR. ANDERSON:	OOd	only	knows.
CAPTAIN RA1TWELL:	They	don't sell them. They certainly don't get
them.
MR. ANDERSON:	The	fish	traps don’t?
CAPTAIN RAMWELL:	They certainly don't get a lot of them -- those
traps out there that you are talking about. We have been out
8562
there repeatedly.
MR. ANDERSON:	The gill-notter didn't get very many of them in
the river, either.
MR.	SIMS:	If that is a fact, do you	want	us	to close	those	traps
up and stop	fishing entirely?
MR. ANDERSON:	No, I don't want you to close any traps. My position
is, as a representative of this Commercial Club baching the fishermen -- is to treat them all on a level, all the different gears. I don't believe by closing the river you are going to increase your supply of fish. That is my position and everybody's observation.
MR. SIMS:	You	don’t thin& any more fish go up the rivers because
the streams	are closed , and the areas	in	front of	them?
MR.	ANDERSON: I	don't think you will	get any	more fish ultimately
hatched and coming down.
MR. SIMS:	That	is your opinion?
HR. ANDERSON:	Yes, that is my opinion.
I.TR. SIMS:	In	other words, then, there won’t be any fish going up
at all.
MR. ANDERSON:	Yes, you have got to have fish going up. This man
tells you, by experience, that when they get up there they kill each other.
R. SIMS:	Well,	you	agree on that with Mr. Watson, but the question
of when there are too many is -f
A VOICE:	Who	knows?
MR. ANDERSON:	God only knows.
6463
C. MR. BLAKE:	As I wrote to Mr. Kearns, your secretary, the other
day, this Board is composed of business men -- alleged business men --MS. ANDERSON:	Sure.
MR. BLAKE:	(Continuing)	--	who	are serving the state without
compensation. Now, you people are all in some business. You know what that means. As I explaines briefly to you in our little conference before the hearing commenced, the state, as a state, has made no provision for the activities of this Board. If the Board desires to act intelligently on these questions, it has got to get information. It is unreasonable to assume that any three men picked at random would be familiar with a subject that scientists have given .years of study to and still accomplished very little. You can read in any of the trade papers or journals that make reference to fishing, that the United States authorities -- and I think that Mr. V/atson will bear me out in that -- are at sea on this proposition.
Now, we tried to create a sentiment in this state that the fishing industry of the State of Washington was worth
>
caring for. That we failed utterly is evident by the attitude of the Legislature, because they made no provision whatever for the fish feature of this state. It is true they did pass the budget that this Board filed, which covers purely the office expenses, no provision in the bud, et for anything else. We anticipated at that time that provision would be made for the activities of the Board so that they couldaccomplisfc. sone-th i ng.
Iff. SIMS:	Let me interrupt you. Our budget included that pro-
pagation fund.
MR. BLAKE:	How?
8564
MR.	SIMS:	Our budget, the one we presented	or	requested,	included	the fund for proeagation, if you	remember, and	that was
disallowed.
MR. BLAKE:	We	included that originally in our budget and it was
cut out.
MR. SIMS:	Yes,	but the impression you have giveia there is that
our budget was allowed. It was not allowed.
MR. BLAKE:	The	budget for office expenses.
MR.	SIMS:	Yes, that was allowed.
MR.	BLAKE:	But the budget for propagation and	development and
rehabilitation of the salmon industry was absolutely cut out.
Now you can readily understand this Board individually has got a living to make, the same as you gentlemen hove; we can't go up and down the streams and back and forth in this country, finding out things thatought to be found out. The state makes no provision for it, and I think that I will not be challenged when I make this statement, that no assistance has been rendered this Board by any phase of the industry.
All that we have come in contact with is exactly what we have come in contact with today -- objections to our policy, a policy that was founded upon such information as we were able to gather.
Now, you gentlemen are simply typical of the shole industry. You are interested in a particular phase of it, yet I don’t think there is anyone here who has made any effort whatever to learn concerning conditions, learn what was necessary to do, who has favored the Board with any information on any subject whatever. Now, I am not criticising you for that, because it seems to be universal. The people of the State of Washington apparently do not want fish.
86Nov;, you people are interested in the game, and it is
your business, and you want to fish; and the suggestion I was going to make to you was that you endeavor to arouse a little
interest in the State of Washington in the fishing feature
of the state.
I have gathered considerable information from what Mr.
Watson told us today. We have been repeatedly approached not in this manner, but individually, by numerous people who have raised the same point that Mr. Watson raised -- that the streams are over-seeded. To verify that, we sent our parties, sent them up and down the rivers, and the statement that I am going to make, that I don't think you will challenge, is this: That we have been absolutely unable to get any information,
*
from any source what soever, ‘of any stream in the State of Washington that is over-seeded. Now, Mr. Watson even is not sure about it. He thinks they-have been over-seeded; if his view is correct, there has been destruction of spawn; that is true.
Now, you gentlemen who are in the business, wouldn’t it be well for you to tyy to arouse a little sentiment somewhere, or do it yourselves, to find out if that thing actually has happened? How are we to know whether there are more fish' going up the Snohomish River or the Skagit River or any other river than are needed there? We would be glad to know. We were selected, probably, for these activities, because it was supposed we had some common sense and a little reasoning poser. Now if you gentlemen will see to it that we get the information, I think the other members of the Board will bear me out in the view that we will endeavor to do what we can do to prevent and overseeding of any of the rivers of the state; but how, in the face of the lack of knowledge of everybody , we are to tell
87whether the rivers are over-seeded or not, until the cycle comes round, I don't know; I confess my ignorance; and if ignorance on that point unfits me for activity on the Board or membership on the Board, I am perfectly willing to give way to somebody who does know. I think the people interested in the business, the people who make their living by it and presumably profit from it, are the people that should make some sort of an investigation of the actual situation, and not apparently throw it or seemingly throw it onto the three men who constitute this Board, who are giving their time for nothing -- and they are giving a lot of it. That is just the point. You people who are interested in it ought to show some interest by endeavoring to advise the Board intelligently as to the actual conditions. We are groping the same as everybody is groping. The Federal Department of Fisheries is groping in the same manner. They have resources, they have funds at their command. We have no funds.
MR. ANDERSON:	They have the same difficulties in Alaska.
MR. BLAZE:	It is true they are trying to do it up there. The
Federal Government is back of them, Federal funds are back of them. We have nothing but a desire to do something, and we don't know how to do it, and have nothing to do it with. That is all I wanted to say. Just interest yourselves in it a little bit and help us out.
ME. WATSON:	On the Atlantic Coast you will find conditions exist-
ing just this way, that in certain states they have got their state laws permitting their fishermen to fish where the Federal Gcvernement has strictly forbidden it and asked the states' support, but the states would not do it and have allowed them to fish. Consequently, the United States Government has got so
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disgusted with trying to hatch fish by artificial propagation for those fellows to take and destroy at the mouths of the rivers, and when the season is closed, that they have slacked up on their artificial propagation, and almost gave up the salmon industry on that coast. It is true that if the state laws stood according to the Federal Government regulations, the Atlantic Coast today would have more salmon than they have had for the last one hundred and fifty years; that at the time and after the Government first took it up, the state laws were in unison with them, but since that ti$e they have commenced to make laws. I just got the full specification of it here a few days ago. I have it where it shows that at the mouths of a number of those rivers the Government had fairly conserved the salmon where they were practically depleted, but now in the last few years those salmon are becoming exhausted.
MR. SIMS:	Conditions	in	this	state	are pretty satisfactory with
the Federal Government. We harmonize on practically every hatchery subject, co-operate in every way possible, and a very friendly feeling exists between the Federal Government and the state, even as to the general laws.
Now, Gentlemen, we will send you our decision as soon as we have a little time to think this over and consider it.
Whereupon the Chairman declared
the meetihg closed.SH222.W2 W36 1923 no.l Fish-Ocean Stacks