This Nest of Dangers: Gillnetting in 1884, 1887, and 1975
Just now, it’s raining axe handles out there; it’s the weekend of Fisher Poets in Astoria, and I’ve been reading the annual report of the U.S. Life Saving Service from the 1880s. Those Cape Disappointment reports tell of hard work, and a hard life, and a harder death. To begin with, the Life Saving reports describe the gillnet fishery of 1884:,, “In the lower part of the Columbia River there are annually employed at least two thousand of these boats, manned by four thousand fishermen. During the season the fishing goes on day and night,.,,, Nearly a century later, in 1975,, “A long time Bristol Bay fisherman spotted [gillnetter] Les Clark of Chinook [profiled in the April 3, 2019 Observer] on Wednesday, Sept. 17, and asked if he could shake his hand. ‘You’re the only man I’ve ever heard about … who got caught in his net reel and came out of it alive.’ Mr. Clark shook the man’s hand heartily. Great read. >click to read<19:25
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