918 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



C— SPAWN-GATHERING IN 1876. 



1. — PREPARATIONS. 



The impracticability of using the hatching-house of the Dobsis Club 

 for the development of spawn taken at Grand Lake stream was suffi- 

 ciently demonstrated by the experience of the previous year. The tem- 

 porary hatching-house at the spring was therefore removed, and a better 

 structure put in its place. The new house was 20 feet wide and 30 feet 

 long, and allowing half its interior for stove-room, tables, working-room, 

 &c., the remaining half afforded room for six troughs, each 22 feet long, 

 one foot wide, and nine inches deep, which, when fitted with the com- 

 pact apparatus devised and brought into use the preceding year, would 

 accommodate, at the utmost, 2,400,000 eggs. 'I should have preferred to 

 use the water of the stream as being, on the whole, preferable for fish- 

 hatching, but no i^racticable site could be found, except we resorted to 

 the expedient of raising the water artificially, which it was not deemed 

 best to do. 



There was no change of importance made in the details of the hatch- 

 ing apparatus nor in the fixtures and implements for catching and 

 managing the fish and taking the spawn. 



2. — TAKING PISH AND SPAWN. 



In 1875, the nets had not been placed until the movement of fish into 

 the stream had been going on several weeks, and consequently a good 

 many of the fish had passed down below our fishing-ground, and there- 

 fore out of our reach. This year the precaution was taken to put in the 

 main nets on September 20, only four days after the beginning of the 

 close-season. By this means nearly or quite every fish that would come 

 into the stream was kept above our nets, and but a small number escaped 

 eventual capture. 



Notwithstanding this husbanding of our resources, however, the sea- 

 son was not destined to be so successful as the first had been. There 

 was, undeniably, a great falling off in the number of fish seeking the 

 stream, owing to some unknown cause that operated before the recent" 

 attempt to cultivate them.* 



The inclosures were all completed October 24, and the capture of 

 salmon then commenced. The precise date of the first spawning among 

 the free fish in the open stream was not observed, but many pairs had 

 been at work on the gravels before October 30, and it was at that date 

 quite evident that the fish were spawning earlier than the previous year. 



Taking spawn began November 6, when all the fish that had entered 

 the pounds up to that date were examined and found to count 337, there 



* Happily this was only a temporary depression. The next season (1877) shows a 

 great increase over both 1875 and 1876. 



