Soon after our commencing work, I was encamped for many months on the banks of the Chilukweyuk river, a tributary to the Fraser, having a short but rapid course through a rocky valley.
In June and July salmon ascend this stream in incredible numbers, filing off as they work upcurrent into every rivulet, filling even pools left on the prairies and flats by the receding floods.
About a mile from my camp was a large patch of pebbly ground, dry even at the highest floods, through which a shallow stream found its way into the larger river. Though barely of sufficient depth to cover an ordinary-sized salmon, yet I have seen that stream so filled, that fish pushed one another out of the water high-and-dry upon the pebbles. Each, with its head up-stream, struggled, fought, and scuffled for precedence. With one’s hands only, or, more easily, by employing a gaff or a crook-stick, tons of salmon could have been procured by the simple process of hooking them out.
It seems to me that thousands of the salmon ascending these small mountain-streams never can spawn from sheer want of room, or, if they do, it must be under most unfavourable circumstances. At the end of the pebble-stream was a waterfall, beyond which no fish could by any possibility pass. Having arrived at this barrier to all farther progress, there they obstinately remained. Weeks were spent in watching them, but I never, in a single instance, saw one turn back and endeavour to seek a more congenial watercourse; but, crowded from behind by fresh arrivals, they died by the score, and, drifting slowly along, in time reached the larger stream. It was a strange and novel sight to see three moving lines of fish—the dead and dying in the eddies and slack-water along the banks, the living, breasting the current in the centre, blindly pressing on to perish like their kindred.
Even in streams where a successful deposition of the ova has been accomplished, there never appears, as far as my observations have gone, any disposition in the parent-fish to return to the sea. Their instinct still prompts them to keep swimming up-stream, until you often find them with their noses worn quite off, their heads bruised and battered, fins and tail ragged and torn, bodies emaciated, thin, and flabby; the bright silvery tints dull and leaden in hue, a livid red streak extending along each side from head to tail, in which large ulcerous sores have eaten into the very vitals.
The Indians say all the salmon that come up to spawn die; but if all do not die, I have no hesitation in saying that very few spring-salmon ever reach the saltwater after ascending the rivers to spawn. Why there should be this marvellous waste of salmon in the rivers of the North-west I am somewhat puzzled to imagine. The distance the fish have to travel from the sea up-stream, or the obstacles they may have to overcome, have clearly nothing to do with their dying. In the Chilukweyuk river the distance from the sea is not over 200 miles, and that clear from any kind of hindrance; and yet they die in thousands. In the Columbia they ascend a thousand miles to the Kettle Falls, and they have been caught many hundred miles above that; still they die just the same as in the shorter streams. Up the Snake river they push their way to the great Shoshonee Falls, over a thousand miles against a rocky stream, but perish there just as they do in the Sumass and Chilukweyuk rivers, which are close to the sea.
Unlike the salmon in our own streams, the spring-salmon in North-western waters spawn in midsummer, when the water is at its lowest temperature and greatest flood-height, from the melting snow. As there is no impediment or hindrance to prevent them returning to the sea, why do they die in N.W. waters? In my opinion, from sheer starvation. Careful observations, made at various Indian fishing-stations and extending over a long space of time, have quite convinced me that salmon (I more particularly allude to the spring-fish) never feed after leaving saltwater. My reasons for thus thinking are, first, no salmon (as far as I know) has ever been tempted to take a bait of any kind in the fresh water above the tideway. The Indians all say that salmon never eat when in the rivers; and I could never discover that they had any recorded instance, or even tradition, of a salmon being taken with bait.
I tried every lure I could think of, to tempt these lordly salmon. The most killing salmon-flies of Scotch, Irish, and English ties, thrown in the most approved fashion, were trailed close to their noses; such flies as would have coaxed any old experienced salmon in the civilised world of waters to forget his caution. Hooks, cunningly baited with live fish, aquatic larvæ, and winged insects, were scorned, and not even honoured with a sniff. Others of the Commission also tried their powers of fascination, but with equally unsuccessful results.
I have opened a very large number of salmon at various Indian fishing-stations, on their first arrival, and during every stage of their wasting vitality, and after death had ended their sufferings; and not in a solitary instance did I ever discover the trace of food in the stomach or intestinal canal. But in every case where a salmon was taken in the tideway or saltwater, I invariably found the remains of small fish and marine animals in its stomach; and in the estuaries and long inland canals that so strangely intersect the coast-line of British Columbia, salmon are readily and easily caught with hook and line; clearly showing to my mind, that whilst in salt and brackish water the North-western spring-salmon feed and fatten, but, after quitting their ocean-haunts for the cold fresh-water, they starve, waste, and die, as a lamp goes out from sheer want of oil. Surely, where hundreds of salmon are split in a day, as at the Kettle Falls, it is fair to assume that if they took any food, by chance a fish would be caught immediately after its meal, with enough evidence in the stomach to prove the fact of having broken its fast; but such proof is never discoverable. Digestion would scarcely be more rapid in the rivers than it is in the ocean and estuary, where we know they eat. Open a salmon and examine its stomach at any time, caught either in nets or with hook and line, and food in various stages of digestion will be invariably found.
Another proof that they undergo a rigid and persistent lent is found in the rapid wasting of all the tissues that goes on during their sojourn in fresh-water. Allowing for the consumption of material requisite for the purposes of reproduction, and the wear-and-tear consequent on making their way up stiff currents, leaping falls, and laboriously toiling up rocky canions—still I contend, if only a partial equivalent was resupplied in the shape of food, waste would not go on to the actual death of the muscles, that slough away in large pieces, as the exhausted fish makes feeble efforts to struggle on; dying at last a loathsome mass of rotting animal matter.