FORTY-FIRST JilKNNIAL ItKl'OK'l 45 



two years Averc a])])r()xiiiiat('ly (M|ual, hut the iMvcr huidiufis of l!)4f) were 

 considerahly lowei'. Tlie (lirCcrciicc in the i-ivcr catches was primarily clue 

 to a strike by the river fishermen in the fall of 194f>. In the early part f)f the 

 1949 fall season before the salmon luid hc.min lo appear in any niinihers, 

 tlie fisliermen received about 18 cents for fish under 14 pounds and 20 

 cents for those over 14 pounds, and evidently expected tiiat this price 

 would last through the entire season. However, on September 8th fish 

 began appearing in quantity; on Septembei- f)th the dealer's cut the price 

 to a flat 18 c(>nts ])er pound, and the fishermen ])rom])tly went out on 

 strike. This strike lasted through the entire remainiler of the season; 

 hence, the bulk of the fall I'un was lost to the industry. A few fish were 

 taken by non-striking fishermen. A somewhat larger number were taken 

 upon the orders of the union itself. Bach day a few fishermen would be 

 assigned to go out, make their catches, and deliver these catches to the 

 union, which would in turn market the fish. The number of fishermen 

 operating at any one time was small. The total number of fish landed 

 during the strike was only a fraction of that which would have been 

 landed under normal fishing conditions ; but, of course, it is impossible 

 to estimate how good the catches would have been had fishing operations 

 been normal. Catches of the few boats that were operating and of the 

 Division of Fish and Game boat Striper (wliich was catching salmon for 

 tagging purposes) are not at all conclusive, but such catches indicate that 

 the season would probabl}^ not have been much better or much worse than 

 that of 1948. 



The future of the salmon run in the main stem of the San Joaquin 

 River looks bleak indeed. This is due to an intensification of the water 

 supply problems which have ruined the runs for the past several years. 

 In the Fortieth Biennial Report of the Division of Fish and Game, there 

 is a brief description of fish rescue operations in which part of the spring 

 salmon run of the San Joaquin was trucked past a dry stretch in the San 

 Joaquin River. This turns out to have been a wasted effort, since it was 

 not possible to get enough water to enable the young of these salmon to 

 reach the sea in the spring of 1949. In order to avoid a repetition of this 

 waste of money and effort, the 1949 spring salmon run was diverted into 

 the Merced River instead of being trucked up the San Joaquin as was 

 done with the 1948 run. This diverting was done by stretching a net across 

 the San Joaquin River exactly at its junction with the Merced so that 

 fish coming up the San Joaquin would be diverted into the Merced in- 

 stead of having to back downstream any distance in order to find their 

 way to this river. The salmon accepted this rerouting with very little 

 fuss, probably because the small flow of return irrigation water coming 

 down the San Joaquin was so warm that it would have been fatal to 

 salmon to have had to stay in it for any prolonged length of time. Pre- 

 sumably the fish realized this instinctively and were willing to accept the 

 cooler and more copious waters of the Merced River. Unfortmiately, the 

 salmon ascending the Merced River did not have a high rate of survival. 

 This was because the fish ascended the river rather slowly and the great 

 majority of them were too far downstream at the time when the irri- 

 gators started diverting almost the entire flow of the Merced River. Sum- 

 mer flows in the Merced are so low that salmon cannot or will not try to 

 ascend the riffles from one pool to the next. As sunnner advances, water 

 temperatures in the lower Merced become so high that the salmon are 



