Gillnetting was an early fishing technology in colonial America, used for example, in fisheries for Atlantic salmon and shad.Netboy, Anthony (1973) The Salmon: Their Fight for Survival, pp. 181–182. Boston, Houghton Mifflin. Immigrant fishermen from northern Europe and the Mediterranean brought a number of different adaptations of the technology from their respective homelands with them to the rapidly expanding salmon fisheries of the Columbia River from the 1860s onward.Martin, 1994, p. 44. The boats used by these fisherman were typically around long and powered by oars. Many of these boats also had small sails and were called "row-sail" boats. At the beginning of the 1900s, steam powered ships would haul these smaller boats to their fishing grounds and retrieve them at the end of each day. However, at that time gas powered boats were beginning to make their appearance, and by the 1930s, the row-sail boat had virtually disappeared, except in Bristol Bay, Alaska, where motors were prohibited in the gillnet fishery by territorial law until 1951.Andrews, Ralph W. and Larsen, A.K. (1959). Fish and Ships, p. 108. Seattle, Superior Publishing Co.
