River-powered clay pounders GIF

[mklotz]

Interesting. Per that link, it looks like they're allowing 55 salmon for a 4-person household; certainly enough to justify building a wheel.

Especially sensible when you consider that a whole village can build one wheel and use it in turn to take their limit.

Judging from the video, an average catch rate of one fish per minute when they're running is conservative. If the run lasts a day, two dozen families could outfit themselves for winter.

I've read that salmon is so plentiful in Alaska that they feed sled dogs with them.

[Frank S]

Why not go all the way and build a fish filleting machine as well

then you could catch gut & fillet all in one place

[Frank S]

then make cat food out of the leavings use the proceeds from the sales of the cat food to pay labor and utilities. you could just about feed whole villages for free LOL

[Jon]

Judging from the videos online, some of the commercial salmon gutting machines are also careful to preserve the roe.

Then after the filleting machine, you just slide those fillets into one of these:

[Frank S]

Now you see we have gone from pounding clay into powder to making me hungry the heck with it I think that I'll just go fishing.
now where did I leave my cane pole

[mklotz]

then make cat food out of the leavings use the proceeds from the sales of the cat food to pay labor and utilities. you could just about feed whole villages for free LOL

The Alaskan laws say that the fish cannot be sold. They also admit that there is a flourishing black and barter market.

[Frank S]

I guessed there would probably some law against the selling of fish guts for cat food LOL

[Toolmaker51]

If you can't process an entire catch, you are wasting bait, time, fish, or efforts in producing helpful offspring.

Sled dogs benefit from the ultra protein compared to volume, caloric return, oils, digestibility, calcium, fatty0-3(?) protecting their skeletal mass and joints.

Long as they don't get wind of bagels, sliced onion, and cream cheese...IYKWIM

[neilabourjaily]

Great use of automation. just like in the fruit packing industry, size uniformity is the key to this operation. Its usefulness as a salmon gutter depends on the uniformity of the catch. I suppose with a wheel, you can grade for size and return the too bigs and too smalls to the water.