FISHING THE PACIFIC 



most sought after of all the species by the sport fishermen. It 

 has been found from the Ventura River, California, north to 

 Alaska on this side of the Pacific and south to northern Japan 

 on the Asiatic side. It ascends all large rivers and streams, 

 particularly the Sacramento, Klamath and Columbia Rivers. 



King or spring salmon, weighing between 80 and 100 

 pounds and measuring between four and five feet in length, 

 have been taken occasionally by commercial fishermen in past 

 years. In the majority of the Pacific coast waters north and 

 south, a 2 5 -pound fish has always been recognized as a big 

 fish but not so at Campbell River. Therefore, in the early 

 days the Tyee Club adopted an arbitrary specification that 

 spring salmon of 30 pounds or over were tyees, and any 

 under 30 pounds even by a quarter of a pound, were merely 

 spring and no records were kept of them. 



A twenty-inch fish weighs on the average about 4 pounds; 

 a twenty-five-inch fish 7V2 pounds; a thirty-inch fish 12 

 pounds; a thirty-five-inch fish 1 8 Vi pounds and a forty-inch 

 fish 29 pounds. In some rivers they run a great deal larger 

 than in others but the majority of the large ones taken today 

 are killed in Campbell River. 



It is supposed that these salmon spend from one to six 

 years in the ocean. The one-year fish average about seventeen 

 inches in length, the second year twenty-five inches, the 

 third thirty-one inches, the fourth thirty-seven inches and 

 the fifth about forty inches. When the fish mature sexually 

 and become ready to spawn they return to their home 

 streams, the majority of them maturing in their fifth year. 

 Soon after spawning they die. None is supposed to survive 

 the first and only spawning season. 



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