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BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
SOCKEYE SALMON 
By Geoege A. Rotjnsefell 
INTRODUCTION 
The Fraser River, with its numerous tributary streams and chains of lakes, is 
potentially the best sockeye river in the world. Over a period of 24 years, six genera- 
tions, from 1894-1917, it produced 195,740,000 sockeyes; an annual average of 8,160,- 
000. The Kvichak River, flowing into Bristol Bay, ranked next, producing, during 
the same period, 155,330,000 sockeyes, an annual average of 6,470,000. The pro- 
duction of the Nushagak River, also flowing into Bristol Bay, was 78,010,000, with 
an annual average of 3,250,000. The river ranking fourth in North America was the 
Karluk, on Kodiak Island, with a production of 47,700,000 fish and an annual average 
of 1,990,000. 
This comparison cannot be made over a longer period of time because in the earlier 
years none of these rivers were fished with sufficient intensity for the catch to be any 
measure of the size of the run, and in later years the Fraser River runs were so depleted 
by the blocking of the river at Hell’s Gate in 1913 and 1914, and the intense fishing of 
the War years, that the catches have no longer given any measure of the productive 
capacity of the river. 
From an annual average catch of 8,160,000 sockeyes for the 24-year period from 
1894-1917, the production of the Fraser River, for the 17-year period from 1918-34, 
has fallen to an annual average of 1,830,000. The consequent annual loss to the 
fishermen of several millions of sockeye, through the failure of sufficient adult salmon 
to reach the spawning grounds, is a waste of the potential capacity of this great 
river. Such a waste of a natural resource, although less obvious, is just as real as 
the needless burning of thousands of acres of forest. 
GENERAL LIFE HISTORY 
SPAWNING 
The sockeye, unlike the other four species of Pacific salmon in this region, rarely 
spawns elsewhere than in a tributary of a lake, or in gravel provided with spring seepage 
within a lake. Sockeyes spawn in one or another of the vast Fraser River lake systems 
from August until December, spawning, in general, being earlier in the Nechako 
River and Stuart-Trembleur-Takla lake systems and later below Hell’s Gate and in 
the tributaries of the Thompson River, although a lake system may have both an 
early and a late run of sockeyes during the same season, forming two spawning peaks. 
The fry, after absorption of the yolksac, wriggle free from the gravel, usually 
during the spring and summer months. Those that are hatched in the tributaries of 
the lakes find their way downstream into the lakes. In some localities a considerable 
portion of the adult run may occasionally spawn in the sluggish outlet stream of a 
lake. Whether or not the fry, upon hatching, ascend the slow-moving stream into 
the lake is not known, but it would appear probable that such may be the case. 
Young sockeyes spend varying lengths of time in lakes before descending to the 
sea. In the Fraser River the majority of the young migrate in their second year. 
