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SALMON OF THE PACIFIC COAST All species of salmon die after spawning The young salmon go out into the Pacific Ocean as soon is they get to bo a few inches long No one knows where they go to but at the end of four years they return to the streams where they were born ind spawn and die dieAt At spawning time the male and female work to ¬ gether and root out holes in the gravel on the riffles where the water is running and is not deep After the place is prepared the female deposits the eggs the male standing guard to keep other fish from eating them Then the male deposits the milt m the eggs and the female stands on guard Then they fill in the hole with gravel and their mis ¬ sion is accomplished When they leave salt water they are in perfect condition without any blemishes but in going up rough streams they wear their fins ind tails off to some extent Before they spawn they begin to show white spots which gradually row spawningThe larger and they all die soon after spawning The fact of salmon returning to the same stream that they went out of lias been well established At the hatcheries when they are turning loose a batcli of young salmon they take some and put i piece of silver wire through their tails with tags showing where they were released These fish will some of them show up at the end of four years in the streams where they were released and none in other streams In this way our experts are ible to tell what the natural wastage is from the small fish to the fullgrown ones onesWhen When they are running up the streams to spawn they seldom take a bait Last fall the writer was fishing in the Snohomish River for trout and a salmon took the hook It was on a smooth riffle and I gradually worked him toward the shore and finally beached him He was fortythree inches long and weighed twentyeight pounds lie had just come up from salt water and had no spots on him and lie had not spawned and was a beautiful fish AVliere I caught him was about twenty miles ibove tide water In the fall it is a wonderful sight to see them in the streams They run up not only the rivers but the small streams and you would be surprised to see how small creeks they are in Sometimes they will go up in such quantities that in the swift narrow places they will crowd those on the edges out on the shore I have seen hun ¬ dreds of them that were crowded out They roil the water in such places After they spawn and die they lie on the bottom till the stream rises and then they are lodged along the shore and when the water goes down the beaches are covered with them Some of the ranchers take wagons and forks and haul they away for fertilizer If a man will watch these fish and study their habits he will pronounce them one of the wonders of nature
