The Salmon 



Jay R. Traver 

 Willoughby, Ohio 



'With slender rod, and line, and reel, 

 And feather-fly with sting of steel, 

 Whipping the brooks down sunlit glades, 

 Wading the streams in woodland shades, 

 I come to the trouter's paradise; 

 The flashing fins leap twice or thrice; 

 Then idle on this grey bowlder lie 

 Mv crinkled line and colored fly, 

 While in the foam-flecked, glassy pool 

 The shy trout lurk secure and cool." 



I think that Izaac Walton would have liked to go fishing with 

 Trowbridge, "to the trouter's paradise." Certain it is that trout- 

 fishing is fine sport, but more exciting game may be found that 

 belongs to the same family as the trout, and is fully as well-known 

 — the salmon. 



Especially on the Pacific Coast salmon-fishing is carried on on 

 an enormous scale by the canneries. Of course for their purposes 

 nets are of more value than the hook and line, but for a true fisher- 

 man "the feather-fly with sting of steel" stands second to none. 

 The salmon may often be induced to snap at the line during their 

 spring or fall runs up the rivers and creeks and a big salmon is 

 exciting sport. 



During the spring floods and again in the fall the runs of the 

 salmon occur. The full-grown fish come in from the ocean at these 

 times, apparently irresistibly drawn by the currents of fresh water 

 which sweep out from the flooded rivers. Great numbers of luck- 

 less salmon are caught in nets near the mouths of rivers at this 

 time. It is almost a tradition that salmon return for spawning to 

 the river in which they themselves were hatched, but rather recent 

 investigations tend to prove that there are absolutely no good 

 grounds for such a belief. It is true that a marked salmon may 

 return to the same river, but then again it may never be seen there 

 again. The reason for salmon returning to their own rivers, when 

 they do thus return, may well be attributed to the fact that the 

 salmon when in the ocean never wander far from shore, and when 

 the call of spawning season comes it may find them actually nearer 

 to the river where they were spawned than to any other. At any 

 rate, the salmon come in from the sea, apparently attracted by the 



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