The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1891-07-09
SALMON AND SEA TROUT.
Come Interesting Facts Concerning Their
Lives and Habits.

No authority on fishes has been able
| to say where the sea trout and the
salmon go in winter; but before the
brooks and rivers begin to freeze In the
late fall they gather in large bodies.
pass RAPIDLY down the stream and swim
away for deep waters. Nothing is seen
Of them again till toward the LIST of
June, when they congregate about the
mouths of tidal rivers and brooks.
A salmon born in the Restigouche will
not, when it has become a grilse, re-
turn to the Miramichi or any other
river, but will swim swiftly and alertly
up and down the coast, sometimes for
several days, till it finds its own river
Sometimes the salmon, after its two
and half years absence since its baby
hood, and returning as grilse TO the
shore, enters the wrong stream, but be-
fore it has swan far upward it discovers
its mistake turns again down stream,
leaving its companions, and makes great
haste to the shore. when II skirts along
till it finds its native river. / have often
watched grilse for hours after I knew
they had lost their way; they swim from
side to side of the river, examining the
bottom, the rocks, and the shadows, and
when they are sure that they have never
seen the place before, they turn and
speedily go seaward.
What makes this most remarkable is
that the salmon, which is Matched out
in the gravel or sand beds in the river
in the beginning Of summer remains in
its native waters only about five months,
when it makes its way down with the
current, being then known as the parr.
a beautiful. 1.-THE, and graceful little
fish from four to six inches long. Its
return is made when 1t is three years
old, when it is known as grilse; but
its recollections from the time of its
babyhood are clear and unfailing.
How often have I lain quietly in
birch bark canoe at the foot of some
fall on the Miramichi and Restigouche,
and watched the advancing march of
this beautiful fish, As they reach the
boiling water at the bottom Of the fall,
they pause for while, with their heads
up stream and very Near to the surface;
then they swim across from right to
left, looking upward to determine the
lowest part of the barrier in front of
them. Then they recoil for short dis
lance, suddenly curve themselves in the
form nearly of the letter c, and spring
upward, making considera bic commo-
ton in the water from the push made
by the tail. The old salmon are the
best jumpers, and often get to the top
Of a fall at the first leap; but have fire.
Quently seen grilse and large salmon,
which / suppose were very old. make
dozen attempts before getting up. They
would reach nearly to the edge Of
fall, fail, and tumble back with a great
splash After resting a minute or so,
they curved, and made the attempt
again. But have known and heard of
no case where any grilse or fairly young
salmon did not at last succeed in getting
over the barrier.
The sea trout cuts through the water
like an arrow, and springs six and
eight feet upward to get over rocks and
little falls. The object of the visit to
the streams every year is that these
fishes may deposit their eggs in the
shallow beds of gravel and sand that lie
everywhere along the upper reaches of
the streams. When the female salmon
in the early autumn is ready to lay her
eggs she poiSes herself above some
shallow, with her head up stream, and
burrows into the sand, up and down
stream, till she has made a cavity large
enough; then she deposits her eggs in
this opening. The constant motion of
the water in one direction soon covers
the ova with sand, and there they re-
main buried till the next spring, when
they grow as large as peaSe, and the
little fish come forth. 1t was believed
up to little while ago that the salmon
fed while in fresh water in summer, and
this was held to explain why it rose and
took the tisherman's fly so easily. It is
now known that the salmon does not
taste food during all the months that it
spends in the river; no food has ever
been found in its stomach in summer,
and the stomach itself, on dissection, is
found to be closed during that season.
1t is asked, why, then, does the salmon
rise to the fly, if not to eat it? Ny
opinion is, and it is sustained by fisher
men and ichthyologists, that the sal
mon takes the gaudy bait trailed about
it sometimes in play and often in anger.
This much is sure, the fish never makes |
an attempt to swallow the fly, for it is
invariably found hooked In the lip
Edmund Collins, in Harper's Young |
People.
NE EA0 TLE PEcr