10 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
during tlie summer montlis spawn late tLat summer or during tbe fall. In some 
instances the redlish spawn until December, and other species later. In the cold waters 
of autumn it is at least four mouths, and usually longer, before the fish is evolved from 
the egg and has absorbed the egg-sac. It is probably spring or early summer before 
it is a free swimmer and takes food of its own capture, and it is quite certain that 
nature has not endowed it sufficiently at this time to take care of itself in the open 
sea. So far as can be learned, it is a year from this time, or the following spring or 
summer — two years from the time of the arrival of the parent fish — ^before the young 
proceed to salt water, and they are then 4 or 5 inches long. 
It is no doubt true that many salmon less than a year old find their way to the 
sea, but they probably have been swe])t from the breeding-grounds by currents 
or other adverse conditions, and have not proceeded to the salt water by their own 
volition. 
At Klawak it was learned that in early spring there are two sets of salmon in the 
lake — one about 4 inches long and another about 1^- inches long. After the ice leaves 
the lake and river the larger ones move downstream to the mouth, where they remain 
for some time and can be seen in very large numbers, all the species that run in the 
stream being represented. Mr. J. C. Oallbreath has made the same observation in 
his hatchery work in Alaska, and has also noticed the cannibalistic tendency of the 
older fish. He therefore iilaces the output of different years in separate lakes. 
It is probable that the young salmon in passing to the sea remain near the edge 
of the continental plateau until they mature, and it is also probable that all fish of 
the same species do not arrive at maturity at the same age; in other words, the fish 
from the same spawning do not all mature the same season. In nearly all the streams 
that have runs of red salmon, numbers of small but fully matured fish of the same 
species are found, and it is said these are all males. In the lake at Klawak were 
seen some of these small salmon, from 1^- to If pounds in weight, that had spawned. 
Some were alive, but in the last stages, and others were dead on the beach — all 
red-colored, hook-jawed, and emaciated. At Ohiguik there are so many of these 
small fish that they are called by a different name — “Arctic salmon.” Eeference is 
elsewhere made to the very small mature redfish that run at Keeker Bay. These may 
all be young fish that matured early and before others of the same output, or they 
may represent a face of dwarfed redfish, such as are found in the lakes of Idaho and 
Washington. 
