116 FISH AND GAME COMMISSION 



about all the protection they need from the action of the last legislature 

 which cut off two months of the troll fishing by providing a closed sea- 

 son extending to the first of June. I am referring here only to the 

 Klamath River and to trolling in the northern coast districts of the 

 state and do not wish to imply that the salmon are getting necessary 

 protection in the rest of the state, for they are not. 



It has been here stated that only five per cent as many salmon eggs 

 can be taken now on the Sacramento for the hatcheries as was taken 

 twenty years ago. There has been no such falling off in the number 

 of eggs which are taken on the Klamath. For a number of years an 

 average of at least seven million young salmon a year have been planted 

 in the Sacramento which were hatched from eggs taken from the 

 Klamath. 



IS THE SALMON RUN BECOMING LATER ON THE 

 SACRAMENTO RIVER? 



It is generally believed by fishermen that the salmon run on the Sac- 

 ramento River is becoming later and that for that reason the open 

 commercial season for netting should be extended to a later date. They 

 believe that when the season now closes on September 17, the run is just 

 getting good or that the best part of the run has not yet arrived. The 

 run does have the appearance of becoming later, but in fact it is not 

 later. The appearance of being later is due to the serious depletion of 

 the river's salmon population, as I will attempt to show. 



This appearance of a retarded run is a phenomenon which is not 

 peculiar to the Sacramento River alone. It has been observed on other 

 salmon streams in this country and on some of the salmon streams of 

 Scotland. There may be two runs of salmon on a stream, as on the 

 Sacramento, a summer and a fall run. These two runs are made up of 

 the same salmon species. The summer run is always the smaller and is 

 made up of individuals which come in earlier than the main run. On 

 a .stream with two runs, the fishing is poorest during the summer run 

 because there are fewer fish in the river then. This summer run may 

 be so light that it does not pay the commercial fishermen to fish. As 

 the supply of salmon in the stream is depleted, the summer run is the 

 first to be reduced to a point where fishing does not pay. It is a well 

 known fact that this summer run is the first to show the effects of over- 

 fishing. Salmon streams in Scotland are called "early rivers" and 

 "late rivers," the early rivers being those with spring and fall runs, 

 the late rivers those without the spring run. W. L. Calderwood, the 

 Scottish authority on salmon, has this to say about the effects of over- 

 fishing : 



After speaking of the reappearance of spring fish in a stream 

 which has been given protection against pollution and overfishing, 

 he proceeds: 



'In other cases where serious overfishing has been allowed to 

 continue, rivers have naturally acquired a late character. With 

 overfishing, or other causes of reduction of breeding stock, the first 

 class of fish to disappear is the spring run." 



Overfishing, pollution of the stream by factory waste or destruction 

 of spawning beds by the erection of impossible dams affect both the 

 early and late runs, but the early run, being the smaller, is the first to 



