the salmon. Shark and the giant blackfish follow dogfish and seal. And
man follows them all, pursuing and killing that he himself may live.

Around Poor Man's Rock the tide sets strongly at certain stages of ebb
and flood. The cliffs north of Point Old and the area immediately
surrounding the Rock are thick strewn with kelp. In these brown patches
of seaweed the tiny fish, the schools of baby herring, take refuge from
their restless enemy, the swift and voracious salmon.

For years Pacific Coast salmon have been taken by net and trap, to the
profit of the salmon packers and the satisfaction of those who cannot
get fish save out of tin cans. The salmon swarmed in millions on their
way to spawn in fresh-water streams. They were plentiful and cheap. But
even before the war came to send the price of linen-mesh net beyond most
fishermen's pocketbooks, men had discovered that salmon could be taken
commercially by trolling lines. The lordly spring, which attains to
seventy pounds, the small, swift blueback, and the fighting coho could
all be lured to a hook on a wobbling bit of silver or brass at the end
of a long line weighted with lead to keep it at a certain depth behind a
moving boat. From a single line over the stern it was but a logical step
to two, four, even six lines spaced on slender poles boomed out on each
side of a power launch,--once the fisherman learned that with this gear
he could take salmon in open water. So trolling was launched. Odd
trollers grew to trolling fleets. A new method became established in the
salmon industry.

But there are places where the salmon run and a gasboat trolling her
battery of lines cannot go without loss of gear. The power boats cannot
troll in shallows. They cannot operate in kelp without fouling. So they
hold to deep open water and leave the kelp and shoals to the rowboats.