8 



STATF,.\[ENT OP SALMON TAKEN FROM THE SACRAMENTO AND SAN JOAQUIN RIVERS, FROM SEPTF,MBER 

 FIFTEENTH, KIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-EIGHT, TO AUGUST FIRST, EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND 



SEVENTY-NINE. 



97,503 loose salmon, weighing 2,437,575 pounds. 



312 sacks and baskets of salmon, weighing 37,740 pounds. 



452 boxes of salmon, weighing 41,086 jiounds. 



18 barrels of salmon, weighing 4,950 pounds. 



40 eases of smoked salmon, weighing L 12,400 pounds. 



13,855 cases of canned salmon, weighing 1,012,850 pounds. 



Total, say 171,438 salmon, weighing 3,546,601 pounds. 



7,104 sturgeon, weighing 607,800 pounds. 



The above statements do not include the catch above Sacramento 

 on the Sacramento River, or above Stockton on the San Joaquin 

 River. In former reports we have added 25 per cent, to the figures 

 reported as being a fair equivalent for the unreported catch above 

 Sacramento and Stockton, and for the fish caught during the close 

 season and salted and smoked in by-places in the tules. Adding this 

 would make the catch of salmon of the season of 1877-8 as 6,520,768 

 pounds, and the season of 1878-9 as 4,433,250 pounds, as heretofore 

 stated. 



The catch of the season of 1877-8 was the largest of any since we 

 commenced obtaining statistics, and is in fact the practical result of 

 artificial hatching. Fish hatched in a given year do not begin to 

 show in the returns until three or four years after the j^oung fish are 

 placed in the water. After nine years of study and observation, com- 

 bined with considerable practical experience, we are prepared to 

 answer the question as to the practicability of keeping up the supply 

 of salmon in the Sacramento, notwithstanding the increase of popu- 

 lation, extended facilities for transportation, and the multiplication 

 of canning establishments, nets, and fishermen. 



First — There must be an honest close season, faithfully observed by 

 the fishermen, to allow a portion of the ripe fish to reach the spawn- 

 ing grounds. This would keep up a normal supply in the river, 

 whicli normal supply would depend upon the area of clean gravel 

 beds at the sources of the streams over which pure water was passing 

 of a proper temperature. It would also give a supply of fish at the 

 only places where their eggs could be taken for artificial hatching. 



Second — The thousands of sea lions and seals at the Golden Gate 

 and in the bay — carefully protected by legislative enactment — with- 

 out doubt catch more fish annually than all the nets of the fisher- 

 men. These rapacious animals observe neither close season nor 

 Sunday, live wholly on fish, and are unceasing in their work of 

 destruction. They should be reduced in numbers or driven to some 

 other part of the coast. 



Third — A portion of the fish being allowed to reach their spawning 

 grounds, and their destruction by sea lions and seals at the Golden 

 Gate prevented, the number of salmon in this river would depend 

 simply on the amount of money which the Legislature should deem 

 proper to appropriate for the purpose. 



After the female salmon escapes all her enemies in the ocean, the 

 sea lions at the Golden Gate, the seals in the bay, and miles of nets 

 in the river, and swims blindly against a stream of more than one 

 hundred miles of muddy water thick with mining sediment and at 

 last reaches the clean gravel beds of the ice-cold sources of the river 



