Yukon Territory - North/Black/Liard River Canoe Trip

Salmonella in Fishermen

Salmonella is a curious disease seemingly transmitted by members of the Salmonid family (Salmon, Steelhead, trout, etc.) to "fishermen," a curious subspecies of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. The fishermen subspecies is thought to probably be a remnant population, the last remaining examples of the otherwise extinct(?) branch of Homo Sapiens Neandertal. Reasoning for this is this curious hunter-gatherer type behavior that permeates everything said fishermen talk about and do, which are thought by leading anthropologists to be attributes of Neandertal.

1. Fishermen follow migrating salmon upstream every spring.
2. They chase them at all other times of the year.
3. They try and catch these fish.
4. They boast about it when they do manage to catch one or more fish (like it's never been done before?).

Such frenetic activity has forced the authorities (a bunch not much more sane than the fishermen they "protect") to invent more bureaucratic nonsense such as:

• things called "licenses", a sort of tax stamp widely available that seems only to pay for more fish for deluded fisherfolk to chase (fueling the fire, a vicious circle?)
• designate fishing "seasons" for all fish, and pointedly to limit the number of, and to separate different kinds of fishermen, who have been known to fight amongst themselves for space along river banks and lake shores.
• and impose "limits" for possession of fish numbers, both in season and out.

Other curious symptoms generated by this disease include:

1. paying lots of money for said licenses
2. spending more money for the paraphernalia to catch fish than the fish actually ever caught are worth in a "fish market,"
3. then spending even more money than for gear in traveling to out-of-the-way places to catch the fish
4. and often upping this ante even more by hiring what's known as a fishing "guide" who perports to know more than the client fisherman, when its obvious to the layman that any person who attaches any term including the word "fish" to his name, title, description or profession, is mentally deficient, anyway.

To prove this point: The most idiodic thing these fishermen do is let most of the damn fish go after they do finally reel the buggers in!

Research Required:
Is this a disease passed from fish to fisherman, and back again?
What is the main and any minor vector(s)?
Did it start with fishermen or fish?
Is it curable? (Other than with cyanide, or a .45 caliber bullet? i.e. could therapy help?)

The singlemindedness gets so bad that, to those who don't fish, the definition of "fisherman" is "a piece of string with a jerk at each end." This realization normally comes shortly after the layman has been chastised by the fisherman for "scaring the fish."

Okay, suckers! (Gee was that supposed to be a pun?) Back to the business at hand, (North/Black Trip Report, where you probably came here from).

Back to previous page or Trip Report, Journal 6

Copyright © 1996 - 2002, and legal fine print
Revised: 15 November, 2002
http://www.canoebase.com/nbl/salmon.htm