1 66 The Life Story of the Fish 



have spawned once. Fish are caught as they ascend the rivers, 

 and held in pens until they are ripe. The female is killed and 

 cut carefully open. Her eggs are poured into a receptacle, 

 fertilized with milt, and placed in a hatchery trough with 

 flowing water. In due time the young hatch, and are re- 

 turned to the stream. The corpses of the parents, while not 

 inedible, have lost condition to such an extent that they are 

 not marketable. However, they are not wasted. Their own 

 young, and the young of trout, have no objection to them, 

 so they are often preserved and ground up to feed to finger- 

 lings which are being reared in hatcheries. 



Most of the salmon caught for the commercial canneries 

 have eggs not ripe enough for fertilization. These are not 

 wasted either. Some are preserved and put in jars and sold 

 to fishermen to use as bait. Most of them are made into 

 salmon-egg meal, which is recognized by growers of trout 

 as one of the best foods for the young. It is especially efiica- 

 cious in bringing out those bright colors which delight the 

 anglers who catch the fish after they have been released in 

 natural waters. All in all, the Pacific salmon adds a lot to the 

 trout fisherman's happiness. 



The second method of artificial propagation is very like 

 the first, except that the parents are preserved alive to spawn 

 another season. The trouts are the outstanding example, and 

 the process is practically identical in its application to the 

 various species. The fish, whether wild adults trapped in 

 natural waters, or hatchery breeding stock, are kept until 

 they are ripe. One man with wet woolen gloves then holds a 

 female by the head and tail while his partner massages or 

 "strips" the eggs out of her into a receptacle. A fifteen-inch 

 rainbow or brook trout will furnish over a thousand eggs, a 

 thirty-inch steelhead over seven thousand. The female is re- 

 placed in the water, and a few drops of milt from a male, 

 held in the same way, are expressed over the eggs and gently 



