SALMON INVESTIGATIONS IN COLUMBIA RIVEK BASIN IN 1896. 
21 
number of redfish entering Alturas Inlet in 1895 was about 2,000 in round numbers, 
and not one ever returned alive to the lake below. The run this year was somewhat 
larger. The greatest number counted at any one time was 1,558, but many had died 
or been caught by campers prior to that time, and many new schools came in subse- 
quently. It is a conservative estimate to say that between 2,500 and 3,000 fish entered 
Alturas Inlet in 1896. While the observations for the purpose of determining whether 
any returned to the lake were not as carefully made as in 1895, there is no evidence 
that a single fish ever returned to the lake alive. 
While the mutilations are usually quite severe, in many cases they are not par- 
ticularly so, and unmutilated fish were sometimes found dead or dying. This fact 
seems to be of great importance because of the light which it throws upon the probable 
cause of the death of spawning salmon. Some naturalists have maintained that the 
dying is attributable to the injuries; others that exhaustion resulting from the long 
journey from the sea or long abstinence from the use of food is the cause; but as a 
matter of fact, many observers have seen salmon dying in large numbers at the end 
of the spawning season in waters only a few miles from the sea, and even in salt 
water, and the cause could, therefore, not have been exhaustion resulting from long 
journeys without food,, or mutilations received on such journeys. That the dying 
results from long abstinence from food is completely disproved by observations at 
Alturas Lake, where redfish have been observed to come up out of the lake with food 
in their stomachs, and have died a few days after spawning. The true cause is evi- 
dently deeper seated in its nature and more general in its application than has been 
supposed. 
Wo large redfish seen in 1896 . — In 1894, 14 large redfish were seen in Alturas Inlet 
and 1 in the inlet to Pettit Lake, and as these waters were visited only once this does 
not, of course, indicate the total number that may have spawned there in that year. 
In 1895 only about 8 large redfish were seen, 3 in the inlet to Pettit Lake, 3 in Alturas 
Inlet, and 2 in Alturas Lake. During the season of 1896 no large redfish appeared in 
Alturas Inlet, nor were any seen at Pettit Lake, which, however, was not visited 
sufficiently often to fully determine the matter. None was observed at Big Bedfish 
Lake during a trip there August 8 to 10, and parties who visited the lake during 
August and September report seeing no redfish. 
Are the small redfish anadromousf — This question can not yet be positively 
answered. If they are, they had reached Alturas Lake prior to July 11, just as they 
must have reached it before July 20, in 1895. But this may very well be so, for the 
big redfish, which is undoubtedly anadromous, had also reached this lake earlier in 1895 
than July 20. Observations at Alturas and Wallowa lakes point strongly to the 
probability of the small redfish being permanently resident in those lakes. The first 
of these was the catching of a small redfish in Alturas Lake July 16. This fish took 
the baited hook, and its stomach was found to contain some food, chiefly insect larvm 
and small crustaceans. One caught in the gill net August 6 had a trace of food in its 
stomach. Twelve small redfish were caught with grabhooks i.u Wallowa Lake by Mr. 
J. J. Stanley, about the first of September, and the stomachs of 9 of them were 
found to contain food consisting almost wholly of entomostracans and other small 
crustaceans. In one case the stomach contained a small quantity of some alga and 
in five or six cases the stomach was quite full of food. 
