34 REPORT OF STATE BOARD OF FISH COMMISSIONERS. 



and ripe for depositing until they reach their far-distant spawning 

 grounds. 



As they eat nothing while on their journey up the rivers, and with 

 their fighting and exertions to overcome this distance, a great deal of 

 the way being through a swift, racing current, and also with a constant 

 draft upon their own vitality to mature their spawn, they become much 

 exhausted and emaciated. 



These fish cannot be used for spawming artificially, for at this season 

 the waters are too high to catch them, and they are too unripe when they 

 pass the United States Hatchery on the McCloud River to catch and 

 impound them; in the attempt to keep them till they become ripe they 

 would all die before they were ready to spawn. They will kill them- 

 selves if kept long in confinement, in their frantic efforts to get free to 

 ascend to their spawning grounds. 



THE CLOSE SEASON FOR THE AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER RUN. 



The spawning time at the Government Hatchery on the McCloud 

 River for the great run of salmon in the late summer and fall is prin- 

 cipally during the month of September; it usually opens about the 

 twenty-eighth of August and continues until the latter part of September. 



The vital points of the question in considering the time for the close 

 season are: At what time should the close season begin at the fishing 

 grounds on the lower Sacramento River, and how long should it last in 

 order that enough breeding salmon from the great run during the months 

 of August and September may reach the United States Hatchery on the 

 McCloud River, during the month of September, to furnish sufficient eggs 

 for the artificial hatching of young fish for distribution on the nursery 

 grounds to maintain the supply of mature salmon for food, which the 

 rivers for nursery grounds and the ocean for feed till the salmon are 

 matured, are capable of producing? 



Ten years ago, during the administration of B. B. Redding, S. R. 

 Throckmorton, and J. D. Far well as Fish Commissioners, as many as 

 fourteen millions of salmon eggs were taken during the month of Sep- 

 tember from the fall run of salmon. 



The close season at that time was during the month of August. 



The close season is now, and has been for some years since, during 

 the month of September. 



The Government Hatchery, on the McCloud River, renewed its oper- 

 ations in 1888. The number of eggs taken in September, 1888, was 

 only about one million five hundred thousand; and in 1889, only 

 about one million one hundred thousand eggs: or, averaging for the two 

 years, less than one tenth as many eggs as were taken ten years ago, 

 when the close season was during the month of August. This is a loss 

 of 90 per cent. 



For what cause, or by whose agency the close season was changed 

 from the month of August to the month of September, I do not know. 

 It was certainly a very disastrous change, if the interests of the salmon 

 were considered. 



During the last Legislature, in 1888, a bill was introduced by some 

 one — from Solano County, I believe — to change the present close season 

 for salmon from the month of September to the month of October. 



If this bill had become a law, the close season would have been 



