THE PACIFIC SALMON 

 (Oncorhynchus) 



Notwithstanding the fact that the salmon is one of 

 the most valuable of all the food fishes, but little is 

 known of its habits after it leaves the stream in which 

 it is hatched until it returns to spawn, supposed to be 

 from three to four years afterward. Whether they 

 remain near the mouths of the streams, or whether 

 they migrate to distant feeding grounds are questions 

 that have never been solved. All of the five species 

 are caught with seins in Puget Sound in greater or 

 less numbers all the year round. From the action of 

 those that spawn in the Sacramento river it would 

 seem that they migrate southward and far out to sea, 

 for on their return to spawn they enter Monterey Bay 

 only on its southern side, and following around it at 

 no great distance from the shore, leave it at the north- 

 ern headlands and skirt the shore northward until they 

 reach the entrance to San Francisco Bay on their way 

 up the Sacramento river. Where the young fish make 

 their habitat from the time they drift down the stream 

 in which they were spawned until they return again to 

 spawn has never been determined. They spawn but 

 once and die soon afterward. As I know that this last 

 statement will be disputed by some, for reasons best 

 known to themselves, I will quote from that excellent 

 work by Evermann and Jordan, "American Food and 

 Game Fishes." "We have carefully," say these gentle- 

 men, "examined the spawning habits of both forms of 

 the red fish and chinook salmon in the head waters of 

 Salmon river, Idaho, during two entire seasons, from 

 the time the fish arrived in July until the end of Sep- 

 tember, by which time all the fish had disappeared. 

 A number of important questions were settled by these 

 investigations. In the first place it was found that all 

 of the fish arrived upon the spawning grounds in per- 

 fect physical condition, so far as external appearances 

 indicated; no sores, bruises or other mutilations show- 

 ing on any of more than 4000 fish examined. During the 

 spawning, however, the majority became more or less 

 injured by rubbing against the gravel of the spawning- 

 beds, or by fighting with one another. Soon after done 

 spawning every one of them died, not only both forms 

 of the red fish but the chinook salmon as well. The 

 dying is not due to the injuries the fish received on 

 the spawning-grounds; many were seen dying or dead 

 which showed no external or other injuries whatever. 

 The dying of the West Coast salmon is in no manner 

 determined by distance from the sea. Observations 

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