Keil — Smolt Period in Salmonoids. 179 



everything as fingerlings in the fall, and for three years following, 

 an average of 200,000 were planted each October. 



This change of method in stocking had a very noticeable effect 

 on the fishing within a year's time. The catch of salmon and steel- 

 heads dropped from 3,100 the preceding year, to 1,644 the following 

 season. No small fish were taken by the anglers; but for the first 

 season at least, it was thought that the fingerlings had not grown to 

 a size where they would take the lure. The records for the next 

 two years tell the whole story; 786 fish were taken in 1908, and 

 but 30 in 1909, with no immature specimens taken by angling or 

 observed around the mouths of the brooks or elsewhere in the 

 lake. Previously, many small male steelheads would be taken in 

 the collection of breeding fish in the small tributary streams during 

 the spring freshets. It must be kept in mind that this lake, like 

 hundreds of others in which salmon and trout are planted, is fed 

 principally by springs ; and that the few small brooks that empty 

 into it are dry by the middle of summer and usually remain so 

 until the late fall or winter. Had there been permanent tributary 

 streams in which to plant these fingerlings, the results no doubt 

 would have been entirely diflferent. 



Of the lot of fingerlings reared during the summer of 1909, 

 15,000 of the largest were sorted out, pushed ahead as rapidly as 

 possible, and 5,000 planted as 6 and 7-inch yearlings in May, 1910. 

 The remainder of the lot were carried through, for it had been 

 decided to resume the planting of older fish. Careful observation 

 of the movements of these yearlings after they were turned out, 

 disclosed the fact that instead of separating and going out into deep 

 water as was the habit of the two-year-olds, they remained together 

 in schools, swimming around near the shore and congregating at 

 the mouths of the brooks at such times as these streams were in- 

 fluenced by heavy rainfall. As the surface water grew warmer 

 toward the middle of summer, they gradually disappeared, and it 

 was thought they had gone down into the deep, cold water of the 

 bottom. None of them were taken by angling that summer or fall, 

 nor was there any evidence the following season to show that any 

 had survived. The yearlings that had been carried through (4,900 

 steelheads and 3,114 salmon) were planted in November, 1910, 

 averaging about 9 inches in length. The summer of 1911, several 

 hundred of these were taken running from a pound to a pound 

 and a half in weight. By the fall of 1911, the hatchery was so 



