The Eulachon — and its Kindred 



A DELICIOUS FOOD FISH WHICH, BY ITS ABUNDANCE AND 



CONSEQUENT LOW MARKET PRICE, IS MAKING 



" A NICK IN THE HIGH COST OP LIVING 



IN THE NORTHWEST" 



Bv D A VII) S T A K R J R D A N 



THE finest food fish in the worhl, 

 tender, fragrant, digestible, is 

 the euhichon {Thalclchthys 

 'pacific us), known to the trade as the 

 "•Cohinibia River smelt."' It belongs to 

 the smelt family (Argentinidw), bnt it 

 differs widely in habit and substance 

 from the two species of smelt found on 

 the two shores of the North Atlantic, 

 and its nearest relative is the capelin of 

 arctic and subarctic waters. 



The eulachon has much smaller 

 scales than the true smelt. Its flesh 

 is more tender, more substantial, and 

 at its best extremely full of oil, but 

 this oil, unlike that of the mackerel 

 and the salmon, is very delicate, and 

 very easy of digestion. 



The eulachon is a slender fish, dusky 

 olive in color, about eight inches in 

 length. It is found on the Pacific 

 Coast from Sitka to Monterey Bay, en- 

 tering the mouths of the rivers to 

 spawn in midwinter, and not going far 

 out to sea at any time. The spawning- 

 males have little warty edgings on the 

 scales, making them velvety to the 

 tovTch. The eggs are very small and 

 white, deposited by the thousand be- 

 tween tide marks on the sand of the 

 river mouths. Just now, February, 

 1917, the beaches at the mouth of the 

 Columbia are lined with these fishes. 

 They can be shoveled up and shipped 

 in boxes; they sell at three to five cents 

 a pound in Portland. These are spent 

 fish. Probably thcv would die, even if 

 put back into the sea. Whether any sur- 



vive the spawning act is uncertain. To 

 die after spawning, the protoplasm in 

 the cells being exhausted as in a dead 

 cornstalk, is a common attribute of many 

 fishes in the Pacific. The six species of 

 salmon, the Japanese icefish {Salanq- 

 iclithijs), and the capelin (Mallotus), 

 all perish after the first sex impulse. 

 For this reason, the eulachon is at 

 its worst when it comes into the mar- 

 ket, soft, mealy, and with scanty oil. 

 Even then, no fish is better, and at the 

 ruling jn'ices it makes a nick in the 

 high cost of living in the Northwest. 



It is said that when a eulachon is at 

 its fattest, in the fall, a wick can be 

 drawn through the body and it will 

 l3urn like a candle. Hence it has been 

 called in books (nowhere else) "candle- 

 fish." The Indians of southern Alaska 

 carve vats in the rocks, fill them with 

 eulachon, and with hot stones try out 

 the oil, which they greatly appreciate. 

 But the oil extracted from rotting fish 

 has an odor of its own which it takes a 

 hardened Indian to appreciate. 



The Indian name of the fish, as I 

 have heard it among the Chinooks, I 

 should spell "oulchn."' But one of the 

 early explorers wrote this same word 

 "eulachon," which is quite pronounce- 

 able and has a Greek look, and this 

 name should be kept, not lost in the 

 expressionless "Columbia River smelt." 

 The species was first named by Sir 

 John Richardson in the Fauna Boreali- 

 Americana, in 1836. But in the note- 

 book of William Clark of the Lewis- 



205 



