CHAPTER VII

Sea Boots and Salmon

From November to April the British Columbian coast is a region of
weeping skies, of intermittent frosts and fog, and bursts of sleety
snow. The frosts, fogs, and snow squalls are the punctuation points, so
to speak, of the eternal rain. Murky vapors eddy and swirl along the
coast. The sun hides behind gray banks of cloud, the shining face of him
a rare miracle bestowed upon the sight of men as a promise that bright
days and blossoming flowers will come again. When they do come the coast
is a pleasant country. The mountains reveal themselves, duskily green
upon the lower slopes, their sky-piercing summits crowned with snow caps
which endure until the sun comes to his full strength in July. The Gulf
is a vista of purple-distant shore and island, of shimmering sea. And
the fishermen come out of winter quarters to overhaul boats and gear
against the first salmon run.

The blueback, a lively and toothsome fish, about which rages an
ichthyological argument as to whether he is a distant species of the
salmon tribe or merely a half-grown coho, is the first to show in great
schools. The spring salmon is always in the Gulf, but the spring is a
finny mystery with no known rule for his comings and goings, nor his
numbers. All the others, the blueback, the sockeye, the hump, the coho,
and the dog salmon, run in the order named. They can be reckoned on as
a man reckons on changes of the moon. These are the mainstay of the
salmon canners. Upon their taking fortunes have been built--and
squandered--men have lived and died, loved and hated, gone hungry and
dressed their women in silks and furs. The can of pink meat some inland
chef dresses meticulously with parsley and sauces may have cost some
fisherman his life; a multiplicity of cases of salmon may have produced
a divorce in the packer's household. We eat this fine red fish and heave
its container into the garbage tin, with no care for the tragedy or
humors that have attended its getting for us.

In the spring, when life takes on a new prompting, the blueback salmon
shows first in the Gulf. He cannot be taken by net or bait,--unless the
bait be a small live herring. He may only be taken in commercial
quantities by a spinner or a wobbling spoon hook of silver or brass or
copper drawn through the water at slow speed. The dainty gear of the
trout spinner gave birth to the trolling fleets of the Pacific Coast.

At first the schools pass into t