TREATMENT OF YOUNG SALMONOIDS AND COREGO.NI. G89 



The adherents of this method base their views on the experience of 

 many years. They say that when they placed the young fish in open 

 waters immediately after the disappearance of the umbilical bag, their 

 stock of fish was not perceptibly increased, while upon one-year-old fish 

 being placed in open waters the stock increased rapidly. 



Many readers will doubtless wonder how, in the face of such observa- 

 tions, I can advise to place the fish in open waters when quite young. 



I must reply, in the first place, that I said " I advised it as a general 

 rule," and in spite of the above-mentioned experience, which I by no 

 means doubt, I feel constrained to abide by this view. 



"As a general rule," it is certainly best to place the young fish in open 

 waters immediately after the umbilical bag has disappeared. 



The increase of our migratory fish, especially of the salmon kind, is 

 justly considered by our most prominent pisciculturists as the main ob- 

 ject of rational pisciculture, and for this object governments have granted 

 subsidies. 



Where there is a question of repopulating large streams and their 

 tributaries, a few thousand fish are of no avail, but millions must be 

 placed in the rivers. But who could raise artificially even a single mill- 

 ion of salmon in narrow inclosed waters'? 



i A well-fed young salmon or trout (the latter grows a little faster) can 

 weigh as much as 30 to 35 grammes in a year's time. A million of such 

 fish therefore represent a weight of 300 to 350 kilograms, valued at 

 $48,000 to $57,000. If a sum like this could be made so easily our country 

 would swarm with piscicultural millionaires. 



Even if my calculation ouly includes reallj" well-fed, one-year-old sal- 

 mon or trout (and it is based on exact weighings) the management of 

 one million of fish, even if they are not all well-fed, involves such 

 enormous weights and values that any one can see the impossibility of 

 carrying on pisciculture in this manner on any very large scale. And 

 then we do not even take into account epidemics which will always occur 

 among large masses of fish. 



We shall most decidedly reach far more satisfactory results if annually 

 at a trifling expense we place several millions of young, strong, and 

 healthy salmonoids (but only such) in open waters immediately after the 

 umbilical bag has disappeared, and there let these little fish fight their 

 own battle for existence. Success will and must crown such efforts. 



If most fishermen and many pisciculturists entertain very little hope 

 for the future of fish which have been placed in open waters at so early 

 an age, this must simply be ascribed to the very generally entertained 

 idea that such young fish are simply food for larger fish, an opinion 

 based* on the idea that a little fish hatched in a hatching- apparatus is an 

 entirely different being from a fish hatched in the open water. 



Unfortunately this idea is not altogether erroneous j for by far too 

 many "artificial" young fish have been placed in the open waters. We 

 S. Miss. 59 41 



