The Daily Alaska empire., 1951-06-16

/ eombed paint from nearby bridge job,. efteined froms a l7-year auto mobile ,end, heeded for Alaska.
 RetcAikAA was read Shedt after a not ,areseptfuls voyage and they get essential surdfes and gas-but pot. grhh-oh jawbone. Then they started for the fishing grounds. |"
 At Meyers Chuck they had little fishing luck. but Lonesome Pete showed them how to rig their gear properly and they went to Ele- phants Nose, near Wrangell, living on candy bars, fresh air and cinched belts for what must have been an ,lncomfortably long time.
 They moved on to. Port Alex ander, which advertised the biggest stock of liquor. on Baranof Island but was dying on its feet for lack of fish, and then to Sitka and Kalinin Ray before they hit fish and beganst make pay. k.
 Their education as swivelnecks continued during the summer as they became part and parcel of the trolling fleet and experienced fogs and bad weather, good fishing and bad, engine trouble and strikes and 'all of the other hazards of the busi- ness.
 s4. t 4 7
 During their wanGerings from Kalinin Bay, to, Cape Cross and then to. Elfin Cove ana Icy Strait as winter afjpfoaehed. they were associated with fisherinen who were part-time drinkers and drinking men who were part time fishermen and they met fish poachers and fish pirates as web as aw-abiding hard working, sober troliers.
 Ryan sketches an atnAzinely life like picture of the lot of them and shows that during his summer among them he gained a. pretty thorough understanding of, what makes a salmon troller tick, pop or roar. M ". : This book does not pretend to be De. handbook for the novice troll Ter or a guidebook to Southeast Alaska, but there is much in it that a newcomer to the trolling fleet would find instructive and the de scriptions of the waters travelled bs the Maggie Murphy are generally accurate
 Ryan does fall into errcr re- garding the early (and still much used) name for Elfin Cove, but the error is pardonable since the Coast and Geodetic Survey long ago put it in the Alaska Coast Pilot.
 The, true name is not Dunk Hole but Gunk Hole and it is an ancient and honorable one It. was brought Tout from the Atlantic Coast where its meaning, according to authori- ties on such. terms, is "a narrow, rocky channel" That. at any rate, is an accurate description of the entrance to what the charts now days call Elfin Cove. .s If the history of Alaska salmon trolling is ever written, Ryan's book will serve as a valuable chapr ter. The history itself will have to start back forty years or so before the Maggie Mllrphy's time to the first commercial hand trolling.
 It was, another Irishman, by the name of Patsy Hamilton, who de fined hand trolling as towing a dead herring around on string"
 The first such fishing was done with rowboats first because power boats were few and then because of theory that engine noise and the churning propeller would scare off the fish.
 When. some uncelebrated icono- ciast exploded that theory it was not long before little boats equipped with a. pair of short poles tipped with bells, cotton fishing lines and that. nov nearly-forgotten mon- strosity. the two-cycle gasoline en- zine, were sputtering around the rocks, reefs and bays of the Pan- handle. .Y
 The Dig modern trollers of to- day. with their high-power engines, steel fishing lines and power driven gurdies, to say nothing of the elec- tronic sounding machines, radio telephohes and automatic pilots, evolved from those first little gas- boats, but it is merely the machin- cry and the technique of catching salmon that has changed, not the method. They still tow a dead her. ring, or q brass or wooden facsi- mile thereof. around on string.
 Meanwhile and until the history of trolling is written, Jack Ryan's book has gone into its second printing and may now be in its third. It is providing several thou sands Of people not only with ar evenings entertainment but with g very clear picture of one small seg- Ement of Alaskan life. FRhM NORTH DAKOTA