8 GEORGE V SESSIONAL PAPER N'o. 38a A. 1918 



V 



REARING SOCKEYE SALMON IN FRESH WATER. 



By C. McLean Fraser, Ph.D., F.R.S.C., etc. 



Curator of the Dominion Biological Station, Nanaimo, B.C. 



In several instances, successful attempts have heen made to rear the Atlantic 

 salmon, Salmo salar, to maturity without permitting it to have access to the sea. 



TarrelP describes such an attempt that was made nearly a century ago as follows : 

 ''A large landed proprietor in Scotland . . . wrote as follows : ' In answer to your 

 inquiry about salmon fry I have put into my newly formed ponds, the water was first 

 let in about the latter end of 1830, and in April, 1831, I put in a dozen or two small 

 salmon fry, 3 or 4 inches long, taken out of a river here, thinking it would be curious 

 to see whether they would grow without the possibility of their getting to the sea or 

 .^alt water. As the pond, between three and four acres in extent, had been newly 

 stocked with trout, I did not allow any fishing till the summer of 1833, when we 

 caught, with fly, several of tho.sc salmon, from two to three pounds' weight, perfectly 

 well developed and filled up, of the best salmon colour outside, the flesh well-flavoured 

 and well-coloured, though a little paler than that of new-run fish.' " 



This attempt was successful as far as it went, but no evidence is given that any 

 of the fish lived to maturity. It has been shown by Dahl, Hutton, and others that, 

 in some rivers in particular, the Atlantic salmon commonly remains three years in 

 fresh water, the length of time these were kept, without any artificial restraint. The 

 experiment is interesting, however, since it shows that the retention idea is by no 

 means of recent development. 



Menzies^ refers to this experiment and mentions others as follows : : " Since then 

 various experiments in this direction have been conducted with more or less success, 

 notably those by Sir J. Gibson Maitland, at Howietoun, where eggs deposited in the 

 winter of 1880-1 were duly hatched and the fry reared until, when nearly four years 

 old (i.e., the same age as grilse), they were found to be ready to spawn, and the ova 

 of the females when fertilized by milt, were found to develop in a perfectly normal 

 manner. In the report of the Fishery Board for Scotland for the year 1908, part II, 

 appendix III, details are given of a male grilse kelt which, owing to an oversight, 

 was left for a year in a small fresh-water ' catch-pit,' and which, in spite of these 

 unnatural conditions, had again become ripe for spawning. 



" Through the kindness of Mr. George Muirhead, the commissioner for the Duke 

 of Richmond and Gordon, who sent the scales and particulars to Mr. Calderwood, 

 I have been able to examine the scales of a somewhat remarkable fish, which died at 

 the Tugnet hatchery, on the Spey, in August last. The details of the life of this most 

 interesting specimen- — a male — as supplied by the keeper of the hatchery are as fol- 

 lows : 'Hatched in April, 1905, the parr was placed in the rearing pond in the summer 

 of the same year, and was retained there until the date of its death in August, 1911, 

 when it weighed 4 pounds 3 ounces. During this period it spawned 'twice, for the first 

 time in January, 1910, and for the second and last time in March, 1911 ; on the latter 

 occasion its weight was 5 pounds 3 ounces, 1 pound more than when it died.' 



lYarrell, Wm. A history of British fishes. Part II, 1836, p. 21. 



2 Menzies, W. J. M. The infrequency of spawning in the salmon. Salmon Fisheries I, for 

 1911, Fishery Board for Scotland, 1912, p. 5. 



38a— 8i 105 



