to the spawning grounds. And the coho did not
school along island shores, feeding upon tiny herring. Stray squadrons
of coho might pass Squitty, but they did not linger in thousands as the
blueback did. The coho swept into the Gulf from mysterious haunts in
blue water far offshore, myriads of silver fish seeking the streams
where they were spawned, and to which as mature fish they now returned
to reproduce themselves. They came in great schools. They would loaf
awhile in some bay at a stream mouth, until some irresistible urge drove
them into fresh water, up rivers and creeks, over shoal and rapid,
through pool and canyon, until the stream ran out to a whimpering
trickle and the backs of the salmon stuck out of the water. Up there, in
the shadow of great mountains, in the hidden places of the Coast range,
those that escaped their natural enemies would spawn and die.

While the coho and the humpback, which came about the same time, and the
dog salmon, which comes last of all--but each to function in the same
manner and sequence--laid in the salt-water bays, resting, it would
seem, before the last and most terrible struggle of their brief
existence, the gill-net fishermen and the cannery purse-seine boats took
toll of them. The trollers harried them from the moment they showed in
the Gulf, because the coho will strike at a glittering spoon anywhere in
salt water. But the net boats take them in hundreds at one drift, and
the purse seiners gather thousands at a time in a single sweep of the
great bag-like seine.

When September days brought the cohoes in full force along with cooler
nights and a great burst of rain that drowned the forest fires and
cleared away the enshrouding smoke, leaving only the pleasant haze of
autumn, the Folly Bay purse-seine boats went out to work. The trolling
fleet scattered from Squitty Island. Some steamed north to the troubled
waters of Salmon River and Blackfish Sound, some to the Redondas where
spring salmon could be taken. Many put by their trolling gear and hung
their gill nets. A few gas boats and a few rowboat men held to the
Island, depending upon stray schools and the spring salmon that haunted
certain reefs and points and beds of kelp. But the main fleet scattered
over two hundred miles of sea.

MacRae could have called it a season and quit with honor and much
profit. Or he might have gone north and bought salmon here and there,
free-lancing. He did neither. There were enough gill-