REPORT. 



To his Excellency George C. Perkins, Governor of California: 



The Commissioners of Fisheries for the State of California, 

 appointed under an Act of the Legislature entitled "An Act to 

 provide for the restoration and preservation of fish in the waters of 

 this ^State," approved April 2, 1870, respectfully submit their sixth 

 report. 



Heretofore reports of the transactions of the Fish Commissioners 

 have been made biennially, at the meeting of each Legislature. The 

 change in time for submitting a statement of our operations, required 

 by the adoption of the new Constitution, necessarily limits this report 

 to the proceedings of the past year. 



SACRAMENTO SALMON — ONCORHYNCPIUS QUINNAT. 



It is with pleasure we report that the annual hatching of two mill- 

 ions of these fish, and placing them in the tributaries of the Sacra- 

 mento River, are producing their legitimate results. The numbers 

 of salmon that could have been taken in this river, before the greater 

 part of their spawning beds had been destroyed by sediment from the 

 gold mines, can never be known. It is the testimony of all the pio- 

 neer miners that every tributary of the Sacramento, at the com- 

 mencement of mining, was, in the season, filled with this fish, 

 hurrying and struggling as if to reach the very sources of these 

 streams. A few salmon continued to enter the Feather, Yuba, Bear, 

 and American Rivers until the floods of the Winter of 1860-1, which 

 covered the gravel bottoms of all those streams with mining sedi- 

 ment, and thereby destroyed their spawning grounds. Continuous 

 and unrestricted fishing, and tlie destruction by mining of so large 

 an area of clean beds of gravel, reduced this fish in numbers in the 

 Sacramento until, in the season of 1872 and 1873, there were probably 

 less than at any other time before or since. Several thousands of 

 young fish, artificially hatched, were placed in the head Avaters by 

 the United States prior to 1873. In that year we made arrangements 

 with the United States authorities to hatch our cjuota of the eggs 

 annually given to each State, at an expense of $1,000 for each million 

 of fish hatched out and turned into the river. Including 2,225,000 

 fish just placed in the head waters, there have been hatched by the 

 State, and turned into the McCloud, Pit, and Upper Sacramento 

 Rivers, 15,350,000 young salmon. 



It seemed desirable that a record should be kept of the catch of 

 salmon in the Sacramento, so as to learn the effect on this industry 

 of the annual deposit of these two million young salmon. 



Since 1874 we have obtained the numbers and weight of salmon 



