168 THE KELT 



meanwhile acting as guard, keeping off other male 

 fishes and also the predatory attacks of troutlets, 

 parr, etc. Directly the female has finished each batch 

 of ova, the male darts over and fertilizes them with 

 his milt, and as soon as possible they sweep gravel 

 over and bury the ova to a depth of at least 2 feet, 

 thus forming the redds above described. The time 

 covering the spawning season in an average stream is 

 from six weeks to two months, the earliest comers 

 being, as a rule, the first to spawn. 



THE KELT 



The male and female grilse or salmon, which have 

 lost enormously in weight, and are now in the kelt 

 stage, leave for the sea in the early spring, recuperate, 

 and, maybe, return as full-grown salmon of from 

 7 to 10 pounds the following autumn. 



It is an interesting fact that the larger a salmon 

 becomes, apparently the less regular it is in its visits 

 to its native water, and in rivers such as the Gula, 

 which lies to the south of the Namsen River, large 

 salmon, evidently Namsen salmon, are not infrequently 

 caught. The Gula salmon are small fish, and when a 

 big fish is caught it is invariably looked upon as 

 belonging to the Namsen. 



Mr. George Beck, a very experienced Norwegian 

 fisher, caught in 1906, on the Roystad stretch, the 

 largest salmon ever caught on the Gula River, and 

 although this was not a marked fish, it is the universal 



