A Glut of Salmon.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1032, 11 December 1891, Page 12

A Glut of Salmon.

The abundance of salmon this year on the coasts and in the rivers of British Columbia and the State of Washington is so great as to be almost incredible. The Port Townsend (Washington) Leader in a recent issue describes the situation in language which, as the Times remarks, recalls the period when apprentices in our own country stipulated that they should not be compelled to eat salmon for more than three dinner's a week. The Leader says : ‘ The present wonderful run of salmon has so glutted the market tliatfor some time these silver sided beauties have been selling at 5c apiece; but the price took a tumble, and several fishermen sold a boatload of fine salmon weighing 201 b each at the pitiful sum of lc apiece. One cent for a 201 b silver salmon, the finest quality of that excellent fish, is the lowest price, perhaps, that a food fish ever sold for in this or any other country ; but salmon are so plentiful that people do not know what to do with them. It is estimated that enough fish could be taken here in one day to fill 1000 barrels. Fisher men say they can make ‘ big money’ by selling salmon at a cent apiece at the canneries if they will only buy all that they can catch. One man caught 14 with a gill hook attached to a hoe handle in one day, and another man claims to have found them in such numbers in shallow water in the Dungeness that he threw them out with a pitchfork and soon got fish enough to last his family for a month. Old residents say they never saw such quantities of salmon before, and a full account of all that one can hear and see about this big run of salmon would sound like the most fabulous of fish stories, and many persons' cannot realise the magnitude of the salmon catch on the sound this season.’