End of the Line

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"They made drastic attempts to save the species," says Hobe Kytr, museum educator. "None were successful because they hadn't a clue to their biology"

The other photo shows a dozen men knee-deep in water struggling to haul in a net filled to biblical proportions. The caption reads: "Haul Seining on Sand Island, August 22, 1921." For this method, teams of draft horses pulled nearly half-mile-long seines onto sandbars in the rivermouth. This particular crew caught 30 tons in one haul, 94 tons in one day. Yet the total catch that year for all five species (some 15.5 million pounds) was just half of the chinook catch at the peak of the fishery in 1883.

That year 39 canneries were pumping out canned salmon on the Columbia, 22 in Astoria alone. The canneries packed more salmon here than anyplace else in the world and sold their product on nearly every continent. They printed colorful labels and devised clever brand names to appeal to their varied markets. These included Pine Burr, Bear Brand, Bumble Bee, Esquimaux, Bon Bon, Rosebud, even Stonewall Jackson Brand (I suppose for the salmon that never surrenders). At its peak, the industry and ancillary businesses employed some 80,000 people. Even during the heart of the depression in 1933—the year the Rock Island Dam became the first to cross the Columbia—the fishery generated $10 million in revenues.

Wearing white cotton gloves, Kytr retrieves a thin volume from the museum archives and carries it toward a table as if it were the Dead Sea Scrolls. The title is "The History and Development of the Fisheries of the Columbia River," more commonly known as the Craig and Hacker Report. Published in 1938 by Joseph Craig and Robert Hacker, two biologists with the former U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, the document is considered the seminal treatise on the problems of the Columbia River salmon. Everything from fishing pressure to dam-caused mortality is in there, says Kytr, tapping the report with a gloved finger.

"About the salmon in Idaho, the questions being asked now should have been considered in the 50s and 60s," Kytr says. "All the data were available. Yet dams were put in without fish passages or with inadequate fish passages. The decision was made 30 years ago. They traded salmon for irrigation and electricity."

When Bill Kirk, archaeologist, former hodad, and rabid steelhead fisherman steps out of his 1958 New Moon house trailer on the banks of the North Fork Nehalem River, a certain gleam shines in his eyes. He wears green oilskins, black rubber boots, and his blonde hair and beard are matted from the rain. He looks as if he has been standing in a river for a few hours, which he has. Earlier that day he hooked and fought two nice steelhead, hence the gleam.

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