The Ketchikan miner., 1908-10-31

and caring for the fish has become serious. However, halibut this year, according to big shippers of fish, are in better condition than ever before, because the fishing boats are better equipped and the men engaged in the industry are learning the most inn proved methods of caring for the catch.
 Shipments of halibut over the north ern transcontinental railways reach l5 cars week. This continues through out the year, for there is no closed halibut season. Fishermen drop their hooks every month in the year, and the demand for haIibut is nearly uni form during summer and winter. This trade annually means a train of halibht filled cars six miles long, worth nearly $l.000.0 GOO. These figures, of course, do not take into con- sideration the local demand, which is heavy. In Seattle, the fish is worth from to 6 cents pound. Prices have been forced down by the number of concerns engaged in the trade, and the constantly increasing fleet of boats that sails for the banks. The New England Fish company, the largest concern of the kind on the coast, operates. from Vancouver, and has four good-sized boats in the traffic. This company. which is an American concern, is building large cold stor- age plant at HKetchikan, Alaska, where most, if not all, of it's catch will be frozen before it is transported to the lower coast.
 When the fishing banks are reached the vessel puts dory after dory over the side with two men in each boat. The dorys are equipped with lines, each line having as many as 40 hooks attached. Herring are used for bait. The lines have ''sinker' at each end, and are thrown overheard to rest on the bottom, for the halibut is a fish which, like the sturgeon, prefers the bottom of the sea. Above each end. a keg buoy is placed with light line dropped down to the sinker. The two fishermen in each boat place half dozen of these lines in the water, and then go back over the same ground and haul them in again. The fish are thrown into the bottom of the dory, where net has first been spread. Then the larger vessel comes around, making a circuit of the dorys, and with steam power hoists the fish on board, where they are dressed and put on ice. An average days catch for the If dorys of the steamer is 5O,O00 fish, so that four days fishing sees a total of 200, 900 halibut.
 The halibut is not a game fish in any sense of the word, and sportsmen would have slender fun hauling in the lines. When the hauling time comes as rule every hook has a 6sh-big hooks they are, too-and nine-t -tenths of the catch is halibut. The other fish obtained are not of much value. Fifty pounds piece is good average for haibut, and sometimes fish is taken that weighs us much as 20o. "Perhaps the Government could study the halibut and learn to perpetuate the supply, but just now we know little or nothing about the natural habits of the fish," said the manager of one of the big Seattle companies. i've do not known when the halibut spawns, or where, except that in cer- tain localities we get small fish. Eventually, probably, it will be nec- essary to devise some form of propa- gation to save the fish, but the need for that is long time in the future. !"
 A new departure is the installing of wireless telegraphy apparatus on the halbut boats. With this means of communication with the vesse S that are out, the offices of the owning company are kept in touch constantly with the movements of the boat, and are informed of the size of the catch, the weather, the stores, fuel, etc., required for the next trip, and other information. This means the saving of time at the home port, and great advantage, perhaps, in marketing the