REPORT OF STATE BOARD OF FISH COMMISSIONERS. 59 



their spawning season, and as they pass up many are intercepted by the Indians, who 

 find a market for considerable numbers in the settlements and logging- camps about the 

 lake. Having constructed a suitable net of mosquito netting, which is affixed to a long 

 pole, the Indian, accompanied by one or two squaws, proceeds to the stream where it is 

 sufficiently narrow for his purpose. Placing the net at the head of one of the deep 

 sandy-bottomed pools which are found at every turn of the stream, he awaits quietly till 

 all the fish near by have been frightened into it by the squaws, who advance from below, 

 and beat the water with sticks. With a sudden scoop he usually empties the pool, taking 

 perhaps from six to a dozen fish from each. All that we saw caught in tliis manner were 

 quite small, averaging perhaps ten inches in length, but they attain a much larger size. 



Oncorhynchus. Pacific Salmon. 



The members of the genus Oncorhynchus are confined to the North 

 Pacific and the rivers flowing into it. They are generally termed 

 salmon ^vithout distinguishing them from one another, or from the 

 salmon of New England and Europe. They are by far the most impor- 

 tant food fishes, and the Quinnat salmon probably surpasses in value all 

 of our other fresh-water fishes combined. 



Four of the five species known are found in the Sacramento; one of 

 these is, however, only occasionally taken. 



All of these species live in the sea, and ascend the rivers only at the 

 spawning season. The Quinnat salmon enter the Sacramento in the 

 spring and summer, a,nd the run ceases, according to Jordan, in October. 

 The larger individuals enter the river first, and the smaller ones, two 

 feet long, do not run till July and August. Jordan says: 



The spring salmon ascend only those rivers which are fed by the melting snows from 

 the mountains, and which have sufficient volume to send their waters well out to sea. 

 Such rivers are the Sacramento, Klamatli, * * * etc. 



Those salmon which run in the spring are chiefly adults (supposed to be at least three 

 years old). Their milt and spawn are no more developed than at the same time in 

 others of the same si^ecies which will not enter the rivers until fall. It would appear 

 that the contact with cold fresh water when in the ocean, in some way caused them to 

 turn toward it and to "run" before there is any special influence to that end exerted bj^ 

 the development of the organs of generation. 



High water on any of these rivers in the spring is always followed by an increased run 

 of salmon. * * * The average weight of the Quinnat in the Sacramento in the spruig 

 is sixteen pounds. 



Those fish which enter the rivers in the spring continue the ascent until death or the 

 spawning season overtakes them. Probably none of them ever return to tlie ocean, and 

 a large proportion fail to spawn. They are known to ascend the Sacramento as far as the 

 base of Mount Shasta, or to its extreme headwaters— about four hundred miles. 



At these great distances, when the hsh have reached the spawning grounds, besides 

 the usual changes of the breeding season, their bodies are covered with bruises, on which 

 patches of white fungus develop. The hns become mutilated, their eyes are often 

 injured or destroyed, parasitic worms gather in the gills, they become extremely ema- 

 ciated, their flesli becomes white from the loss of oil, and as soon as the spawning act is 

 accomplished, and sometimes before, all of them die. 



Dr. Gr. Brown Goode says of this fish: 



Fifty years ago it was hardly known, except to students of natural history. Now it is 

 known and eaten almost all over the world, for there is hardly a port in the world where 

 ships have not carried the canned salmon of the Columbia, which is the same fish under 

 a different name; and not only has this fish, in the form of food, traveled nearly all over 

 the world, but the living embryos of the California salmon have been transported to 

 England, France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Russia, Australia, and New Zealand, 

 so that there is probably no one fish inhabiting a limited locality which is known over 

 the world in so many different places as the California salmon. 



The four species of Oncorhynchus found in the Sacramento are distin- 

 guished by the following characters: 



fl. Scales small, lateral line more than 200 Gorbuscha. 



aa. Scales large, lateral line 125-155. 

 b. Pyloric ca^ca 50-80; lateral line 125-135 Kisutch. 



