T44 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. The 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 mote likely on that account to return to the 
Clackamas 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 ran 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 ina measure true. Two additional species (keta, kisutch), 
not found in the spring, make up a large part of the fall ran. 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 
