FORTY-FIRST BIENNIAL REPORT 49 



they would like to p-o salmon fishinji' without charge, the reservation 

 being that they were to donate all fish for this tagging program. The 

 idea appealed to the sportsmen and the skippers had no trouble obtaining 

 full crews. The Division of Fish and Game furnished a minimum of one 

 tagger to go with each boat. On a few boats, two taggers went along. 



On the twenty-sixth of March, 1949, this armada put to sea, and 

 spent the morning and early afternoon fishing for salmon. Fishing was 

 only fair and 69 fish were landed by the 15 boats. This operation did 

 a great deal to promote better understanding between the division and the 

 boat operators and the sportsmen, and it was decided to repeat in 1950. 

 The 1950 salmon season opened earlier, i.e., on March 1st; hence, it was 

 decided to hold "Tag Day" on February 26tli, the last Sunday before 

 the opening'of tlie season. Operations were much as in 1949, except that 

 the weather was a little better and the fishing was a great deal better. 

 Twenty boats tagged a total of 365 salmon during the day's operations. 

 Twelve fish were killed during the course of the tagging operation. These 

 were all turned over to charity. 



The most important result of this ocean tagging has been to show 

 that the great bulk of California's king salmon originate in the Sacra- 

 mento-San Joaquin Kiver systems. An earlier tagging experiment con- 

 ducted from 1939 to 1942 also demonstrated this fact. The present 

 experiment confirms the older findings and conclusively demonstrates 

 that if we are going to have a salmon fishery either in the river or the 

 ocean, we are going to have to be very careful about what happens to 

 the spawning beds of the Sacrameuto-San Joacpiin River systems. 



Interesting but much less important than the mass movements of 

 salmon into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers are the occasional long 

 range and high speed movements shown by a few individual fish. One 

 king salmon went from San Francisco to southern Canada in 31 da.ys. 

 Another made the trip to the Columbia River in 22 days. One salmon 

 tagged ofl: Oregon was recovered in the Tuolumne River. Another tagged 

 off the Washington coast was recovered in the Sacramento River. One 

 tagged off southern Canada was recovered oft' New Years Point, between 

 San Francisco and Santa Cruz. 



Silver salmon are much less important in the California fishery 

 than the kings. The landings of silvers amount to only about 10 percent 

 of the State's total catch. Tag returns show that the movements of silvers 

 in no way resemble those of kings. Most of the recoveries from Califor- 

 nia-tagged silvers were made in the waters off' Oregon or in Oregon 

 streams. This northward movement shows in returns from both the 

 1939-42 tagging and from the present tagging experiment. 



Another experiment involving cooperation by the States of Cali- 

 fornia, Oregon, and AVashington was the marking of salmon in the 

 rivers of the three Pacific Coast states in order to determine what streams 

 were providing what percentage of the marine catches of salmon in what 

 specific areas. This work was started in 1950. California's share was to 

 include the marking of 200,000 hatchery-reared fish from Coleman 

 Hatchery on Battle Creek, 200,000 wild fish from the Sacramento River 

 and 200,000 fish from a coastal hatchery. As actually carried out, the 

 work included 234,000 wild fish from the Sacramento River (marked 

 by removing dorsal and left ventral fins) ; 235,000 from Coleman 



