OTHER BRANCHES OF INDUSTRY. 813 



§ 229. Fishing. — The rivers of California and the waters of 

 tlie ocean near its coast abound with fish. Trout are cauglit 

 in the little streams, salmon in the Sacramento, and San Joa- 

 quin, and the rivers emptying into the ocean north of San Fran- 

 cisco Bay, and a great variety of fish are caught in the ocean. 



Our fisheries are as yet so limited in extent that few fish 

 are salted, nearly all going while fresh to supply the market 

 of the towns on the coast. Salmon is the only fish salted 

 for export. The species of salmon caught in our waters is 

 called the Quinnat salmon. They are born in the rivers, go 

 out to sea when three or four months old, stay out at sea 

 some months, probably not less than fifteen months, and then 

 return to the river in which they were born, there to spawn. 

 The Quinnat salmon, as found in our waters, averages ten 

 pounds in weight and sometimes grows to sixty pounds. It 

 enters our rivers in November and remains about four months. 

 Before our rivers were kept in a continual state of muddiness 

 by the gold miners, the salmon ascended every brook in the 

 Sierra Nevada, large enough for a fish to swim in, but now 

 they do not leave the large rivers nor ascend them far. The 

 salmon in clear Avater offer fine sport to the fisherman with the 

 fly, but in California they are caught only as a matter of busi- 

 ness, and always in the gill-net, A\^iich has meshes just large 

 enough to let the fish get his head in, and then the twine 

 catches him behind the gills and holds him. The net is not 

 dragged, but is stretched across or partly across the river and 

 is allowed to drift with the current down stream, a distance 

 of some hundreds of yards, perhaps a quarter or even half ft, 

 mile, the fishermen accompanying it in a boat. The net has 

 lead sinkers at the bottom and cork floats at the top, so as to 

 keep it upright, and it is not so deep as to catch on the bottom. 

 Tlie fish are swimming up the river, so they of course run into 

 the net. A large number of salmon are taken in Eel River, 

 llun.boldt county, and great quantities might be caught in the 

 Klamath and other streams along the northern coast. A few 

 young salmon varying from three to six inches in length, are 

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