REPORT OF STATE BOARD OF FISH COMMISSIONERS 89 



is gamy and vigorous, takes the hook freely, with a fly, an insect, a 

 salmon egg or a scarlet petal from some mountain flower. 



It is a good food fish. All trout are that ; some perhaps better, but I 

 cannot see much choice. In Kamchatka the Dolly Varden is baked in 

 pies, "deep pies," like those sold in English eating houses, and in that 

 form they are surely good. To the trout-hog the Dolly Varden can be 

 strongly commended, for it swarms in millions in every Alaska stream 

 (the Yukon and its tributaries excepted). It will take the hook cheer- 

 fully, even dutifully. I once saw two Dolly Vardens caught with a 

 pin-hook, which a little girl let down through a knot hole into the 

 gutter on a street in Skagway. And of the thousands there is not 

 one that would ever be missed, for each one which is killed saves the 

 lives of a dozen salmon. 



The trout of the Yukon is the Mackinaw, or Great Lake trout 

 Christivonn r namaycush \, another kind of char, which reaches a great 

 size, and is known by its cream-color spots. These are never red as in 

 the true char. This char is found also in various lakes of British 

 Columbia, bu1 it does not enter the United States to tin- westward of 

 Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. And so it does not belong in the 



list of trOUt of out- Pacific ('oast. 



Hut with all the rest we may commend it to the true angler. And 

 the true angler is not the one who loves to fish, or who catches fish, 

 or catches many fish, or many large fish. The true angler is one who 

 Loves fish well enough to know one kind from another. "It is good 

 luck to any man." so Izaak "Walton tells us. "to be on the good side 

 of the man that knows fish.'' And to that man this little sketch, with 

 its pictures from the deft hand of the Japanese artist, Sekko Shimada, 

 is dedicated. 



SALMON. 



The name salmon is given in England and all Eastern States to a 

 large, trout-like fish which lives in the sea. chiefly about the mouths of 

 rivers, and which enters the streams to spawn, running for a consider- 

 able distance up the stream and returning to the sea after the act of 

 spawning is accomplished. The old males become somewhat distorted, 

 especially through the lengthening of the jaws, but the changes with 

 age and season are not much greater than in any large trout. The true 

 salmon, like the true trout, is black spotted. It is called in science 

 Salmo salar, and along with the true trout it belongs to the genus 

 Salmo. There is but one species of Atlantic salmon ; it is found on both 

 sides of the ocean, and on both sides it becomes, sometimes, land-locked 

 and dwarfish when it is shut up in a lake and when it can not or does 

 not go to the sea. 



