FISHING: Baron of the Brine

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Catch a Big Prize. From then on Big Nick expanded by buying one little boat after another. He branched out into airlines with Alaska Southern Airways in 1931, later sold it to Pan American at a big profit, got back in the business this year with West Coast Airlines.

Big Nick, a generous contributor to the

Democratic Party, has been accused of using his political connections to the detriment of small fishermen. This hurts Nick. He confesses that packers, including himself, "cotch too damn many feesh" to maintain present sources of supply. "My interest [in the Explorer]," he recently protested in a ghostwritten letter, "[is] for the postwar stability of the industry, to develop new grounds and methods."