THE PACIFIC COAST SALMON 



No more extraordinary subject in tlie history of fish and 

 angling is presented than the life history of the above-mentioned 

 salmon. Dr. David Starr Jordan has made it a careful study 

 and has shown some startling and extraordinary facts. But it 

 may be said that the king salmon is the game fish par excellence^ 

 and it -will be found all along the Pacific coast, particularly 

 at Vancouver, where very large specimens are taken with the 

 spoon and bait. The angler will always hear of fly fishing, and I 

 recall a very courteous invitation once received from an English- 

 man in Vancouver, the lure being that I shoidd be shown some 

 salmon fly fishing. I also recall, if I am not mistaken, that Mr. 

 Kipling enjoyed the fly fishing for salmon on the Klackamas, 

 an Oregon river. 



The king salmon and the blueback have a spring run up 

 the rivers, whfle all the rest, according to Jordan, ' run ' or go 

 up to spawn in the fall. Ordinarily the salmon live in the ocean, 

 probably off the mouths of the rivers or near at hand, and they 

 appear to move up the streams — the Sacramento, Klamath, 

 Columbia, Fraser, Nass, Skeena, Stickeen, Taku and other 

 streams in a more or less regular order. The chinook first ; 

 then the blueback, silver, humpback and dog salmon. It is 

 believed that the first to enter the rivers are those which make 

 the longest journeys. Thus the quinnat or king salmon, which 

 we have seen at Monterey and Klamath Lake, travels up the 

 Yukon to Lake Bennet — a distance of two thousand two hun- 

 dred and fifty miles from the mouth of the river, while the 

 red salmon is known to swim to ' Forty Mfle,' over one thousand 

 eight hundred miles from the Pacific. 



There is a remarkable difference in habit. Thus the fixie king 

 salmon, which may weigh from twelve to one hundred pounds, 

 enters the large rivers which rise in melted snows, while the red 

 salmon. Dr. Jordan tells us, AdU enter only rivers which pass 

 through lakes. The great chinook spawns at the head of 

 rivers ; the red salmon in small streams that flow into lakes. 

 The other species mentioned do not swim long distances, but 



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