744 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



for a considerable time before the fall rains cause the fall runs, and it may be taken in large 

 numbers with seines before the season for entering the rivers. Tlie quinnat salmon, from its great 

 size and abundance, is more valuable than all other fishes on our Pacific coast together. The blue- 

 back, similar in flesh but much smaller and less abundant, is worth much more than the combined 

 value of the three remaining species. 



The fall salmon of all species, but especially the dog salmon, ascend streams but a short distance 

 before spawning. They seem to be in great anxiety to find fresh water, and many of them work 

 their way up little brooks only a. few inches deep, where they soon perish miserably, floundering 

 about on the stones. Every stream, of whatever kind, has more or less of these fall salmon. 



It is the prevailing impression that the salmon have some special instinct which leads them 

 to return to spawn in the same spawning-grounds where they were originally hatched. We fail to 

 find any evidence of this in the case of the Pacific coast salmon, and we do not believe it to be 

 true. It seems more probable that the young salmon, hatched in any river, mostly remain in the 

 ocean within a radius of 20, 30, or 40 miles of its mouth. These, in their movements about in the 

 ocean, may come into contact with the cold waters of their parent rivers, or perhaps of any other 

 river, at a considerable distance from the shore. In the case of the quinnat and the blue-back, 

 their "instinct" leads them to ascend these fresh waters, and in a majority of cases these waters 

 will be those in which the fishes in question were originally spawned. Later in the season the 

 growth of the reproductive organs leads them to approach the shore, and to search for fresh waters, 

 and still the chances are that they may find the original stream. But undoubtedly many fall 

 salmon ascend, or try to ascend, streams in which no salmon was ever hatched. 



It is said of the Russian River, and other California rivers, that their mouths in the time of 

 low water in summer generally become entirely closed by sand bars, and that the salmon, in their 

 eagerness to ascend them, frequently fling themselves entirely out of water on the beach. But 

 this does not prove that the salmon are guided by a marvelous geographical instinct which leads 

 them to their parent river. The waters of these rivers soak through these sand "bars, and the 

 salmon " instinct," we think, leads them merely to search for fresh waters. 



This matter is much in need of further investigation ; at present, however, we find no reason 

 to believe that the salmon enter the Rogue River simply because they were spawned there, or that 

 a salmon hatched in the Clackamas River is any the more likely on that account to return to the 

 Clackainas than to go up the Cowlitz or the Des Chutes. 



"At the hatchery on Rogue River the fish are stripped, marked, and set free, and every year 

 since the hatchery has been in operation some of the marked fish have been recaught. The young 

 fry are also marked, but none of them have been recaught." 



This year the run of silver salmon in Frazer's River was very light, while on Puget Sound the 

 run was- said by the Indians to be greater than ever known before. Both these cases may be due. 

 to the same cause, the dry summer, low water, and consequent failure of the salmon to find the 

 rivers. The run in the sound is much more irregular than in the large rivers. One year they will 

 abound in one bay and its tributary stream, and hardly be seen in another, "while the next year 

 the condition will be reversed. It is evident that often the salmon are swimming about in search 

 of fresh water, and that they will enter the first river they find. 



There has been much discussion pro and con among canners as to whether the hooked jawed 

 fall fish are really different species from the spring salmon, or whether they are merely different 

 states of the same fish. Both views are in a measure true. Two additional species (keta, kisutch), 

 not found in the spring, make up a large part of the fall run. On the other hand, the same species 

 that form the spring run are also found in the fall, but so transformed that it is not strange that. 



