To the editor:
…most of Alaska’s salmon are not caught by small gillnet boats [WWF Sept. 2004]. The limit on Bristol Bay gillnetters is 32 feet. Purse seiners catch most of the salmon, and a troller is not a longliner. There is no longline fishery for salmon. Salmon trollers pull bait and artificial lures through the water to get salmon to bite and get hooked. Longliners fish on the bottom for sable fish, halibut and assorted other bottom dwellers, with baited hooks attached to weighted and anchored groundlines.
Pete Esquiro
Sitka, Alaska