and maggots. Most of the credit for this rapid growth is due to the 

 good start the fry got on this food, some of them attaining a length 

 of over two inches on it alone ; the fry showing the most partiality 

 for it were the healthiest and most contented in the ponds. It 

 appeared, however, that this food is suitable only for the earlier stage 

 of fry life, as milk is to the young of animals, for later on they 

 ignored it entirely. 



In a paper^ read at the Annual Meeting of the American Fisheries 

 Society two years ago, the writer described how sockeye fry ate the 

 bodies of their parents when preserved in cold water through the 

 winter. 



Spring or king salmon fingerlings five to six inches in length when 

 six months old, were fed four months on chum salmon, liver and 

 maggots. The remarkable growth of these fish and the sockeyes just 

 referred to inclines one to question the necessity for holding the fish 

 over to the second summer, especially when comparing them with the 

 natural yearlings from Cultus Lake. 



The question is, does the sockeye remain in fresh water merely 

 to attain a certain size, and, provided that size has been attained in 

 six months instead of a year, are its chances of survival any less? 

 If they attain a year's growth in six months, will they return a year 

 sooner? An attempt to throw some light on these questions was 

 made here this year by marking 4,000 six-months-old and 8,000 year- 

 ling sockeyes with distinctive marks to see when they will return. 



The food on which the fish were fed was placed on submerged trays 

 a foot under water and suspended from floats. A lump of ground 

 salmon and liver, mixed with a little gravel if it showed a tendency 

 to float, was placed on each tray several times a day and the fish soon 

 learned to nibble it off. Fed this way the fish got more substance 

 from the food, and there was less waste, than if it had been cast on 

 the surface in a liquid state. 



With large, deep ponds, water between fifty and sixty degrees in 

 temperature, and plenty of raw fish and liver, it is a comparatively 

 easy matter to rear sockeyes to a length of three or four inches in six 

 months. The feeding of millions of fry and fingerlings is an expen- 

 sive undertaking, and the mortality is bound to be high where fish 

 are crowded and unnatural food is fed ; thus a number of years will 

 elapse before facilities can be provided to rear all the fry under these 

 conditions. 



By utilizing the barren lakes, meaning natural ponds and lakes 



^ Robertson, Alexander: The parent fish as a food supply. Transactions of 

 American Fisheries Society, Vol. XLVIII, June, 1919, pp. 158-9. 



93 



