Like in that portion of this work devoted to the game birds, this also is written in popular language, avoiding, as far as possible, all technical words and phrases, with the intention of furnishing a plain description of the game fishes of the Coast which anyone, unlearned in the science of ichthyology, may understand, and by which be able to identify any of the fishes he may capture.
With fishes, like with birds, there are certain parts that must be referred to in order to show wherein one species differs from another. Wherever these parts have a common English name, that name has been used. But as there are a few parts that can only be referred to by their scientific names, a diagram has been added showing the location of all parts referred to in the text.
In scope it treats only of such varieties as rise to the fly or are caught by trolling with rod and reel, whether from the stream, lake, bay or ocean, and furnish sport to the angler who fishes for the exhilarating pleasure their capture affords.
The Pacific Coast is rich in game fishes, not only in the varieties found in its lakes and streams, but as well in its bays and estuaries, while the broad ocean furnishes varieties whose size and fighting qualities are not surpassed, even if equaled, in any other part of the world. To place in the hands of the young angler, and others who may not have given the subject the necessary attention, a convenient handbook by the aid of which even the novice may readily recognize the species of fish he has landed, is the object of these pages.
All of the salmon, the trout, the chars, the white-fish and the lake herring have been classed by the naturalist in one family and given the name, Salmonidæ; but it is only with three genera of the subfamily, Salmoninæ that we are concerned. These are the Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus), the true trout (Salmo) and the Eastern trout and the dolly varden trout (Salvelinus). The Atlantic salmon belong to the genus Salmo, the same as the true trout, and have but one species (Salmo salar), which partake more of the habits of the trout than do their Pacific cousins.
THE PACIFIC SALMON
(Oncorhynchus)
Notwithstanding the fact that the salmon is one of the most valuable of all the food fishes, but little is known of its habits after it leaves the stream in which it is hatched until it returns to spawn, supposed to be from three to four years afterward. Whether they remain near the mouths of the streams, or whether they migrate to distant feeding grounds are questions that have never been solved. All of the five species are caught with seins in Puget Sound in greater or less numbers all the year round. From the action of those that spawn in the Sacramento river it would seem that they migrate southward and far out to sea, for on their return to spawn they enter Monterey Bay only on its southern side, and following around it at no great distance from the shore, leave it at the northern headlands and skirt the shore northward until they reach the entrance to San Francisco Bay on their way up the Sacramento river. Where the young fish make their habitat from the time they drift down the stream in which they were spawned until they return again to spawn has never been determined. They spawn but once and die soon afterward. As I know that this last statement will be disputed by some, for reasons best known to themselves, I will quote from that excellent work by Evermann and Jordan, "American Food and Game Fishes." "We have carefully," say these gentlemen, "examined the spawning habits of both forms of the red fish and chinook salmon in the head waters of Salmon river, Idaho, during two entire seasons, from the time the fish arrived in July until the end of September, by which time all the fish had disappeared. A number of important questions were settled by these investigations. In the first place it was found that all of the fish arrived upon the spawning grounds in perfect physical condition, so far as external appearances indicated; no sores, bruises or other mutilations showing on any of more than 4000 fish examined. During the spawning, however, the majority became more or less injured by rubbing against the gravel of the spawning-beds, or by fighting with one another. Soon after done spawning every one of them died, not only both forms of the red fish but the chinook salmon as well. The dying is not due to the injuries the fish received on the spawning-grounds; many were seen dying or dead which showed no external or other injuries whatever. The dying of the West Coast salmon is in no manner determined by distance from the sea. Observations made by us and others elsewhere show that the individuals of all species of the Oncorhynchus die after one spawning, whether the spawning-beds are remote from the sea or only a short distance from salt-water."