484 
■fJUHE 11^ 1904. 
i^NDnvttmniN" 
Salmon Culture in America. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Since my.good friends, Livingston Stone, of New Yotk ; 
Commissioner Babcock, of British Columbia, and C. H. 
Barkdull, of Seattle, Washington, assured the editor of 
the London Fishing Gazette that salmon culture 011 the 
Pacific Coast of America had, so far, been a great suc- 
cess, and would, in the near future, without any further 
protection than the laws now give, enable the catlnfers 
and fishermen and local consumers to "eat their cake and 
have it, too," the writer has been collecting reliable in- 
formation on the whole question as it now exists in the 
United States and Canada. This he intended placing in 
your hands at an early day; but as the official report for 
1903 of Mr. Babcock, Fisheries Commissioner for British 
Columbia, has been sent him by an obliging friend in 
Victoria, he has concluded to make some extracts and 
offer some remarks on the subject now, in order to show^ 
from Mr. B. himself, the results of the wasteful and 
destructive fishing that has hitherto been pursued in two 
salmon rivers on the Pacific Coast — the Columbia and the 
Fraser. 
The second paragraph of the report says: "It is well 
known that the run of salmon in the Fraser River during 
the past year was the poorest that was ever known. The 
scarcity was largely confined to the sockeye variety, 
though all varieties showed a marked decline. As the 
sockeye is the great commercial salmon of the Fraser, its 
failure to run as abundantly as usual entailed great loss 
upon both the fishermen and canners. But what is of 
far greater importance to the Government, the fishers, 
and the canners, than the remarkable decrease in the 
catch, is the fact that the number of the sockeye which 
reached the spawning grounds of the Fraser this year 
was so small as to severely threaten the destruction of 
this great industry. * * * This statement, which may 
reasonably alarm those interested, is made after a most 
careful inspection of the spawning grounds during the 
past summer. I believe that the decrease in the run and 
the absence of fish upon the spawning grounds this year 
is attributable to excessive fishing. An investigation of 
the conditions existing on the fishing grounds for the 
past five years amply demonstrates that to be the case.'' 
Mr. B. goes on to state that in his report of the pre- 
vious year he had pointed out "that there was urgent 
need of giving greater protection to the fish." In that 
report he had stated "that the greatest movement of the 
sockeye seeking entrance to the Fraser passed through 
the American channels of Puget Sound, and called atten- 
tion to the fact that there were no limitations, either of 
time or method, placed upon the capture of sockeyes in 
these waters, and that in consequence all, or mostly all, 
the fish which attempted to pass through these channels 
were captured by trap, purse or drag nets." The same 
report also showed that, in Canadian waters, though the 
fishing was confined to the use of gill nets, there was 
an excessive number of these in use. 
In addition to this wholesale destruction of the parent 
fish at the approaches and mouths of the rivers which 
the fish enter only for the purpose of procreation, Com- 
missioner Bahcock tells us, at page 9, that on the upper 
waters the young salmon are destroyed in the same ruth- 
less manner. After describing the destruction of fry and 
yearling by loons, ospreys, and other water birds; by 
trout, char, arid burbot, which cannot be prevented, he 
writes : "Another source of destruction, more pernicious 
in its effects on the young fish, was found to exist which 
can, and should, be prevented. On the 2d of May last, 
at the head of Portage Creek, T found a brush and rock 
dam which prevented the passage of the young salmon 
from the lake, which was constructed and used by In- 
dians for the purpose of enabling them to take immature 
fish for food. It was an ingenious and most destructive 
contrivance, built in the form pf a great funnel; its wings 
■were made of logs, green boughs, willow brush and 
rocks. At its lower end was a basket-trap, into which 
the fish were swept by the swift waters, and removed by 
Ihe Indians. At every Indian house on Portage Creek 
were found young salmon taken from these traps. The 
Indians eat the yearlings in a fresh state, and smoke and 
dry many more. * * * there is an abundance of 
game in ail these sections, and the Indians have no trou- 
ble in getting all the food they need, no possible ex- 
cuse can be made for destroying these young salmon, and 
I stronglv urge that steps be taken to prevent their doing 
so." It seems not to have occurred to Commissioner B. 
that there is far more excuse for these ignorant Indians 
lhan there is for presumably intelligent fishermen and 
canners at the mouths of the rivers. 
In the report before me, Commissioner Babcock says: 
''We are told by some Washington officials that this de- 
crease in the run of salmon is occasioned by the failure 
to provide adequate hatcheries; that only by their estab- 
lishment can the run be maintained." The innocence or 
naivete of these officials is refreshing! In former letters 
to Forest and Stream, the writer showed by copious ex- 
tracts from the writings of Sir George Simpson, Capt. 
Butler, Lieut, gwatka, Matthew Macfie, Charles Hallock, 
Livingstf n Stone, A. C. Anderson, Samuel Wilmot, and 
flhomal Mow^t, that before this excessive fishing' Wa'S 
Iparrf^ Of^ f ^Pft W ttl^ S^ci'sn^eiito, the CoJunjbiij, 
Fraser ahd thfe Skeeha rivers were so overcrowded thai 
tmf W'e're killed in vast numbers in their aSceiit b their 
spawning grounds. Is it not plain to , ahy man hot 
blinded by cupidity and seif-iriterest, that as natural 
propagation produced, tlie^e overwhelming numbers before 
greed and selfishness led to the excessive fishing Commis- 
sioner B. describes, protective legislation and curtailed 
destruction, not hatching houses, are the readiest and 
cheapest means of restoring the rivers to their former 
productiveness ? 
In former issues of Forest and Stream we were told 
much about the obtuseness of English and Canadian pisci- 
culturists, and of the greater shrewdness and business 
ability of the canners of the Pacific Coast. In quite a 
gushing paragraph, Mr. C. H. Barkdull, of Seattle, wrote : 
"Out here we have the prettiest girls, the richest gold 
mines, the best battleships^ the biggest trees, and the 
most Salmon of ahj eouritry in the world ; and, with the 
assistance of Uiicle Sani, w'e intend to shoW England 
and the World that we can keep up the supply of our in- 
cf easing (?) products if ^ we havfe to do it artificially." 
If, in the face, of CommisSipher BabCock's reports and the 
teachings of thirty years' fish hatching in Great Britain, 
the United St'ateS arid Canada, these sharp businels ttieh 
of the West expect, by any numbe;r of hatching, houses, 
to keep upjhe excessive fishing described by Commis- 
sioner B,, the writer must entertain grave doubts, not 
only of their unusual "shrewdness," but of their business 
capacity. 
In your issue of May 2, 1903, Coniniisslorigi- Sab'cofck 
told us that the combined Eraser Rivjgr and Puget Sourid 
pack in 1901 was 2,400i6©6 Cases of 48 pounds each, mak- 
ing 115,229,088 pouridSi which,, he said, iS nearly half the 
annual pack of the World. The consequence of this ex- 
cessive fishih'g is shown in his report before, me, from 
which I have giveri the foregoing extracts. That he and 
Mr. Barkdull (who both seem to be ignofaht of the his- 
tory of salmon culture in Europe, the United Stated and 
Eastern Canada), should hope to keep up this supply by 
hatching houses is not surprising. . .But that Prof. Prince, 
the Dominion Superinterident of Fishculture, should en- 
courage this hope, is, to the writer, wholly inexplicable. 
He must, or at least he ought to, be familiar with the re- 
sults, Of salmon culture in his native country, if not on 
the Continent, and he must surely know what is recorded 
in the blue books of his department. These show that 
fishculture has been a Government work for thirty-one 
years, and that there are now in active operation 20 
hatcheries, which have planted the "grand total" of 
3,705,616,700 young fish, and that the last year's catch of 
every species manipulated is less than the catch of the 
year in which the hatching houses were started. Where 
we naturally look for some visible and tangible returns 
for the large sums spent in building, managing and main- 
taining the hatcheries and in procuring the parent fish 
from which the ova were obtained, we find a steady an- 
nual decrease in the catch. The fisheries reports, care- 
fully compiled from the annual returns of fishing over- 
seers in the several Provinces, give us a means of com- 
parison. Commissioner Babcock has told us the result 
on the Pacific Coast in the extracts above given, and he 
urges the building of many more hatching houses and 
managers' cottages. 
Prof. Prince's report for 1903 gives us the catch of 
salmon in Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, 
where the bulk of the young salmon have been planted. 
The report for 1874, the year the hatching houses were 
started, gives the catch of salmon in New Brunswick as 
3,214,182 pounds. The catch in 1902, with the help of three 
hatcheries for twenty-eight years, was about half, amount- 
ing to only 1,658,007 pounds. In 1874 the Nova Scotia 
catch was 1,758,818 pounds; in 1902, with the help of 
three hatcheries ever since 1874, the catch was 556,386 
pounds, a decrease of more than 75 per cent. In Quebec 
the returns for 1874 were incomplete; but the salmon 
catch was carefully estimated at 1,500,000 pounds; in 
1902, with the help of three hatching houses, the catch 
was 935,883 pounds. In Ontario, salmon culture has long 
been abandoned as a useless expenditure of money. In 
P. E. Island, after running the hatchery for eight years, 
and planting 6,185,000 fry in a single river without any 
visible result, except the loss of all the money expended, 
the house has been abandoned to decay. 
^ As it_ was the lack of proper protection and the 
destructive efiPects of over-fishing in Europe and America 
that led to artificial hatching in the hope that it would 
restore the loss and keep up the supply, and as thirty 
years' experience everywhere has shown the futility of 
that hope, does it not behoove governments, officials, 
fishermen and canners to give up the vain dream of eat- 
ing their cake and still having it, and do what has been 
too long neglected — restrict fishing within reasonable 
bounds, and give the fish a chance to reproduce in the 
way that was sufficient to overcrowd all their haunts be- 
fore man's greed and stupidity led to such destruction as 
the reports of Commissioners Prince and Babcock 
disclose ? 
So far as the writer has been able to learn from the 
best available sources in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 
not a single river in which salmon or trout were not in- 
digenous has been sfocked with either salmon or trout. 
In X\\& Atlantic St'sfes, takini^ the rc^jdrts of tlieir corn,- 
rnissioners as evidehce, the sanie story is told. Not a 
single river or _ stream has, by artificial culture alone, 
been stocked with either salrhon or trout; not a single 
adult Pacific salmon of any variety has been taken from 
the waters in which were planted all the fry hatched out 
by Livingston Stone, one of the oldest and most ex- 
perienced pisciculturists in the United States. An Ameri- 
can gentleman who for many years has taken a great in- 
terest in fishculture, ittfqfrils ttie that he estlnlates the 
cost of every pound of salirlori of- troiit caught by anglers 
in "Stocked Waters" at tibt le§s thah fivfe dollaf§. 
Sbme of US are old ehOUgh t6 fgriilmber whett buffalo 
darkehed the prairies Cf the West; when wild pigeons 
in erioirmOuS flo'cks dafkeried ,the Sun.; \VHeri pihriited 
grouse v/er,e as plentiful on _ the .prairies as jbwls in A 
hennery ; when wild g'etefeie ^hd diicks were fbuhd on eVef^ 
rivei-,. lakS ahu .sti-eam; when q.uail and .partridges were 
touiid in every field and Copse that yielded them food and 
shelter; when oui- riverS were alive with Sa,lnion, and but 
lakes and streajris with trout. Ih a single, lifetime tlie 
buffalo has all but disdppeai-ea ; the wild pigebri is ttbW 
a^ curiosity i^n, all, the Nofthei'ri States dnd Eastem 
Canada ; . prairie chickens al-e now found in but a few 
favored localities in .fhe Western States ; Avild geeSe and 
ducks are anhually becoming scarcer, while some varie- 
ties, like the can,vasback and redhead, ai-fe iuxuri,eS foi" 
millionaires ; quail ^hd i-ufted gfoilSe .ai'e dimost Uttkribwh 
in localities wherfe tney wferfe bnce plentiful; ahglirig for 
Salmon and ti^out .Can how be indulged in only by those 
with means enough to owh or kase the watei-s in which 
they are found. 
So far as the salmon fisheries of North America are 
concerned, their existence as a profitable industry riow 
depends on a greatly reduced open s.eaSqHi and Stridt pfo^ 
tection on thfeii: ^pawning gfouhds during ,tne cloge 
season. One-half the money how Spent oh useless Hatch- 
ing houses, if Spent .ih protecting thfe fish fi-orri senseleiSs 
destruction, will produce better results. One plain deduc- 
tion from the facts stated in Commissioner Babcock's re- 
port for 1903, is this: If the state of things therein 
described is allowed to continue ten years longer, enough 
ova to stock the hatcheries he recommends to be built 
could not be obtained in any of the rivers his report deals 
with. 
When the writer has completed his inquiries, he will 
place the results jn your hands for the benefit of those 
who are now chasing rainbows. 
The Old Angler. 
Sussex, N. B. - 
Yellowtail a Dollar a Pound. 
My boy Harold, aged thirtCeri, and his rilothef arfe 
in California. They took a run over to Catalina Island, 
and the boy had not stepped upon the wharf before he 
became filled with yellowtail microbes. In fact, the skip- 
per of the boat filled him full of them Ott the way over 
from Pasadena. So everything in the way of engagement 
of rooms at the hotel, etc., would have been secondare 
and inconsequential matters had the boy had his way. 
But in due course a launch was chartered at $5 per half 
day, and off they went after yellowtails. 
The boy got a strike. The fish took out the reel like 
mad ; in fact, the boy's mother was not so much alarmed 
for the fish as she was for the boy. The flexure of the 
rod and the struggles of the little fellow to brace his feet 
against the gunwale of the boat were realistic in the ex- 
treme, and it seemed to his mother that it was a fight for 
supremacy as to whether the yellowtail would force the 
boy to swim the pathless sea with him or the boy would 
bring him to gaff. It was a great fight, the boy in his ex- 
citement endeavoring to follow the boatman's instructions 
as to giving him the reel, taking in slack, etc. It was a 
25-pound fish, so the boatman said, and would no doubt 
have weighed that had the boy landed him, but the fish 
wrapped his tail around the leader, bit it off— not his tail, 
but the leader— and the fighf was over. It was once more 
the case of the biggest fish getting away. The boy was 
disconsolate as the time came to point the nose of the 
launch_ toward shore. He fought the battle all over 
again in his dreams that night, and no doubt this time 
caught his fish. 
His mother thought the yellowtail microbe had beeri 
exterminated, and— but mothers are sometimes mistaken. 
The microbes instead of being exterminated were multi- 
plying at the rate of many thousands per minute, and~ 
another trip was arranged for, and off they went. Every- 
thing turned out wrong, it appears; tide, wind and 
weather were unpropitious, and again did the party return 
empty-handed. Instead of the yellowtail fever now sub- 
siding in the boy, it took an acute turn, and he vowed 
he would not leave the island if he had to stay there a 
month until he had caught a yellowtail. 
His mother began to do some figuring. Ten dollars 
expended and nothing to show for it, and the boy more 
dissatisfied than ever. So there was nothing to do but 
again arrange with the launchman and go out once more. 
And this time the boy got a strike. The boatman coached 
him, and he implicitly followed instructions, making no 
mistakes, and giving Mr. Yellowtail no opportunity to 
wrap His caudal extremity around " th'e leader and th"e^ 
