“Sam Crouch. He has a store down here and met us at the aviation field.”
“It looks like a put-up job to me,” said Bob. “You and Earl, one of the most ardent fishermen in the state, start out for Medford and end at Roseburg, where you meet Sam Crouch, another fish enthusiast. I’m glad that I could horn in.”
In a short time they were all in Sam’s automobile headed up the Umpqua River. They drove about fifteen or eighteen miles up the river and stopped at the hatchery. Neither Bill nor Bob had ever seen a hatchery before and immediately began asking questions.
“Tell me something about the hatchery and what it is for?” asked Bill.
“I hardly know where to start,” said Earl.
“Why do they have hatcheries?” asked Bob.
“To increase the number of fish which are incubated from the eggs,” replied Earl. “The salmon lay their eggs in the sand and gravel in the bottom of the rivers and creeks. The eggs stay there until they hatch out. While they are incubating the other fish eat them, in spite of the fact that the large salmon try to conceal them by covering the eggs with sand. Then, again, as soon as the small fish comes out of the eggs, they are in turn prey for the larger fish. You can accordingly see why a very small part of the eggs ever bring forth fish which grow to any size. The hatcheries take the eggs and hatch them out, as you will soon see, in small basins. They hold the small fish for some time and then plant them in the streams. In this way the young fish, called fingerlings, have more of a chance for their white alley.”
“How do they get the salmon to come to the hatcheries?” asked Bill.
“They don’t have to,” replied Earl. “Salmon have a peculiarity which makes it easy for the hatchery people. When spawning time comes, salmon always return to the place where they were born. The young ones gradually work their way down to the sea and go out into the ocean. Just where they go, no one knows, but after a period of three to five years they come back up the streams in swarms. They never mistake the streams, but always come up the one which they went down years before. The Fishery Department has determined this by tagging the salmon and then catching the same ones years afterwards.”
“Let’s go over to the river and let them take a look at the fish coming upstream,” said Sam.