60 DEPARTMENT OF PISH AND GAME 



above comparison are the double-tagged-fish returns which show when a 

 fish has retained one tag and lost the other. 



A great stimulus to the return of salmon tags has been the ' ' bonus ' ' 

 awards of from five to one hundred dollars offered by the San Francisco 

 Tyee Club for the return of certain "lucky-numbered" salmon tags. 

 During the biennium the top reward was increased from $50 to $100. 



Tagging in inland waters has been conducted in the Sacramento-San 

 Joaquin Delta and in the Sacramento River itself. This work was done 

 to obtain data on the movements of salmon through the delta and popula- 

 tion estimates in the upper river. The delta tagging was done with gill 

 nets from the Fish and Game research boat Striper. In the Sacramento 

 River the salmon were caught by the use of gill nets and large fyke nets. 

 These fyke nets are a chicken-wire-covered cylindrical trap 10 feet in 

 diameter and 18 feet long. "When properly placed in the river, they prove 

 highly effective in catching salmon and steelhead trout. The steelheacl 

 were taken incidentally but were also tagged and released. 



To obtain quantitative information on the movements of king and 

 silver salmon and to determine the quantities of fish contributed to the 

 ocean fisheries by various important river systems, the Pacific Marine 

 Fisheries Commission recommended a large scale marking experiment 

 as a supplement to the tagging experiment. This work was started in 

 the previous biennium, but Table 3 gives a summary of all the marking 

 done in California from the inception of this experiment. Comparable 

 numbers of king salmon have been marked in Oregon and Washington, 

 and the silver salmon marked in the two northern states have far ex- 

 ceeded those marked in California. (Silver salmon are relatively unim- 

 portant in California.) 



The hatchery fish marked at Coleman Station have in each instance 

 been provided by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, but the 

 marking was done by the California Department of Fish and Game. The 

 wild fish marked at Coleman Station were captured by fish and game 

 employees in fyke nets in the Sacramento River. They were transported 

 to the hatchery, marked, and returned to the river after marking. 



The king salmon marked at Prairie Creek Hatchery and released in 

 Big River were from eggs taken from Mad River fish. It was the original 

 intention to return the marked fish to Mad River, but the Bureau of 

 Fish Conservation was previously committed to planting king salmon 

 in Big River and the number of eggs obtained was so low as to make it 

 impractical to plant in both places; hence the entire release was made 

 in Big River. 



Wild silver salmon marked in Prairie Creek Hatchery were taken 

 from the streams of Del Norte and Humboldt Counties by seining crews. 

 The crew would send one man to scout streams until he found a suitable 

 source of silver salmon, whereupon a three- to four-man crew would 

 rapidly progress from pool to pool making innumerable hauls with small 

 seines. The silver salmon were separated from other species of fish and 

 held in live boxes until near the end of the day's work, at which time 

 they would be transferred to milk cans and taken to Prairie Creek 

 Hatchery for marking. After marking they were usually returned to 

 the stream from which they were taken. If there were any likelihood of 

 the stream drying up, all salmon and trout captured would be taken 



