The average weight of the quinnat in the Columbia in the spring is twenty-two pounds; in the Sacramento about sixteen. Individuals weighing from forty to sixty pounds are frequently found in both rivers, and some as high as eighty pounds are reported. It is questioned whether these large fishes are:
(a.) Those which, of the same age, have grown more rapidly;
(b.) Those which are older but have, for some reason, failed to spawn; or,
(c.) Those which have survived one or more spawning seasons.
All of these origins may be possible in individual cases; we are, however, of the opinion that the majority of these large fish are those which have hitherto run in the fall and so may have survived the spawning season previous.
Those fish which enter the rivers in the spring continue their ascent until death or the spawning season overtakes them. Probably none of them ever return to the ocean, and a large proportion fail to spawn. They are known to ascend the Sacramento as far as the base of Mount Shasta, or to its extreme head-waters, about four hundred miles. In the Columbia they are known to ascend as far as the Bitter Root Mountains, and as far as the Spokan Falls, and their extreme limit is not known. This is a distance of six to eight hundred miles.
At these great distances, when the fish have reached the spawning grounds, besides the usual changes of the breeding season, their bodies are covered with bruises on which patches of white fungus develop. The fins become mutilated, their eyes are often injured or destroyed; parasitic worms gather in their gills, they become extremely emaciated, their flesh becomes white from the loss of the oil, and as soon as the spawning act is accomplished, and sometimes before, all of them die. The ascent of the Cascades and the Dalles probably causes the injury or death of a great many salmon.
When the salmon enter the river they refuse bait, and their stomachs are always found empty and contracted. In the rivers they do not feed, and when they reach the spawning grounds their stomachs, pyloric coeca and all, are said to be no larger than one's finger. They will sometimes take the fly, or a hook baited with salmon roe, in the clear waters of the upper tributaries, but there is no other evidence known to us that they feed when there. Only the quinnat and blue-back (then called red-fish) have been found in the fall at any great distance from the sea.
The spawning season is probably about the same for all the species. It varies for all in different rivers and in different parts of the same river, and doubtless extends from July to December.
The manner of spawning is probably similar for all the species, but we have no data for any except the quinnat. In this species the fish pair off, the male, with tail and snout, excavates a broad shallow "nest" in the gravelly bed of the stream, in rapid water, at a depth of one to four feet; the female deposits her eggs in it, and after the exclusion of the milt, they cover them with stones and gravel. They then float down the stream tail foremost. A great majority of them die. In the head-waters of the large streams all die, unquestionably. In the small streams, and near the sea, an unknown percentage probably survive. The young hatch in about sixty days, and most of them return to the ocean during the high water of the spring.