Fish and Fishermen lyj 



salmon are in most cases not ready to spawn; they seek 

 "resting" spots where they can remain quietly until the sex 

 products ripen. Resting spots must have cool, unpolluted, 

 well-oxygenated water. Spots where large numbers of fish 

 can be held artificially without high mortality are extremely 

 hard to find. If that difficulty can be overcome, there remains 

 the matter of cost. The number of eggs necessary to produce 

 the number of salmonids which run annually up the Colum- 

 bia River comes nearer to being expressed in billions than in 

 millions. If to the expense of building the hatcheries we add 

 the annual outlays for handling the products, the cost of 

 maintaining such a run year in and year out by means of 

 hatcheries alone is prohibitive — even if it can be done, which 

 has never yet been proved. The federal government built 

 many salmon hatcheries in Alaska. They have all been 

 closed. 



SPORT FISH 



The greatest of all the sport fishes are the large marine 

 species — the swordfishes, the tunas, the sailfish, the tarpon. 

 About these man can do little except to catch them, and his 

 pursuit of them in sport is comparatively innocent and has 

 but an insignificant effect upon their populations. It is the 

 fresh-water game fishes which can be most affected by his 

 actions, either for or against, and of these the various trouts 

 and the black basses and their relatives are the most wide- 

 spread and the most popular. 



The trout is more susceptible of manipulation by man than 

 any other fish. With almost equal ease he can destroy or he 

 can create whole populations. The philosophy of his dealings 

 with trout has, in this country, passed through three distinct 

 phases. First came the phase of introductions. The last half 

 of the nineteenth century saw man indulging in a passion 

 for meddling with nature, for transplanting animals from 

 parts of the world where they had evolved to other parts 



