In 1955 when I first fished with Severin on a troller and watched the Addington salmon trap during August, the corporations owned the salmon traps and and the seiners caught what was left over in the inside waters and fished the ocean where traps wouldn’t last in the swells and storms.
With Alaska statehood in 1959, the traps, were banned and the corporations competed for the most successful seining skippers to fish for them in the effort to keep the canneries profitable. The salmon traps had depleted the fish runs and the seiners competed for the salmon still returning to Southeast Alaska and to rivers further down the West Coast.
The west coast of the Alaska islands bordering the Pacific Ocean not only had pink salmon returning to Southeast Alaska streams but sockeye and chinook salmon migrating to rivers down the west coat of Canada and Washington.
These were exciting times in the fishing industry