228 FLY FISHING AND SPINNING 



by the most probable and natural influence of their own 

 instinct. 



THE LIFE OF THE SALMON 



If the reader should, in the early spring, be wandering 

 beside the upper and more shallow waters of any salmon 

 river, his attention may possibly be attracted to certain 

 mounds of gravel rising from the bottom of the stream. 

 He will observe that these mounds are kept clean and free 

 from mud by the sweep of the current in which they are 

 situated, and to which they offer some resistance. 



These gravel mounds are called salmon redds, and they 

 are formed by the female salmon when spawning. 



During the autumnal and winter spawning season the 

 female fish, after first making a depression or trough 

 in the gravel and driving out all muddy or weedy sediments 

 by fin and tail action, deposits her ova in the depression 

 she has thus made. The eggs, which are heavy to a certain 

 degree, will remain on the gravel when thus deposited, 

 and are, or should be, fertilized by the attendant male 

 salmon, after which this trough is either intentionally 

 or accidentally filled up by the disturbed gravel as the 

 fish continue to spawn up-stream, and thus the eggs are 

 safely buried below perfectly clean gravel matter, from 

 which all deleterious substance, such as silt and mud, has 

 been swept away, by the struggles of the fish when spawning, 

 assisted by tail and fin action. 



If fertilization does not take place the eggs absorb water, 

 and become opaque. 



No matter how cold and empty may appear the river 

 you are watching, hundreds of thousands of tiny lives are 

 healthily pulsating beneath these stream-swept redds, and 

 steadily, as the temperature of the river rises, are becoming 

 daily more capable of breaking through the elastic covering 



