The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-05-22
PACIFIC SALMON RUN
 A DEATH PROCESSION
Swim to HeadWaters to Spawn and Never Return to
 the Sea.

ever saw Pacific coast salmon nor than seven years old, although so1nt spring salmon have been caught tlla |Iweighed almost loo pounds The salmon run, which has begun now in the rfvers of British Columbia is funeral procession. This applies to five out of six members Of the Pa cif1c coast salmon family. The sixth the trout. The five other specia
 visit the spawning grounds only once and then die. The salmon always
 spawns in fresh water. as far LID from the sea as it can get, near the source
 of the river. The young fish agree
 with the current. and this accord y takes them back to the salt sea.
 The salmon inhabits the sea until I 1t Is grown up fish and feels the 1 strong influence of the mating instinct. l This. like thu sex inpIse of the bee, I is message of death.
 Then the salmon mate and begin their nuptiaI voltage mp the rivers to the spawning beds. It is no exag- geration to say that the beautiful fish, l in whose bodies life runs rich and strong. meet their death after a des- perate honeymoon of strug gg1e and suf- l fering which lasts only few weeks. They do not take food after they leave the salt water. They are like the low l CTS in the Greek poem whose passion was so great they forgot to take nour- l ishnent and died of starvation. a TO- rnantic death.
 The waste of natures enormous fe- cundfty is well illustrated by the sal mon. Each female salmon lays about 5000 eggs. Only one of these, on the average, becomes an adult fish. The rest of them, will for the most part k hatch. but the young fish serve as food for other fish.
 Yet vast number of salmon are taken by the cannery fishermen on the Pacific coast If one takes for ex- and makes q little research into the records. one finds that about 6S ,000,- ,- 900 were actually packed into cans in that years run. Six million one hundred and forty thousand cases were packed on the Pacif1c coast that season. or 294.762,576 one pound cans. Then about 25.o0o, 900 more salmon were caught that year by commercial fishermen and sold fresh in the mar kets and mild cured, smoked and frozen for cold storage. About 10. 0oO, ,000 others were prob babIy caught by Indian fishermen and by others who were fishing for private food sup ply.
 Then the straight haired seals, DOT poises. the whales. the bears. the cou- gars. the lynx, the mink, the maretn. the eagles, and other inhabitants of ocean and forest LOOK enormous mum bers of salmon during the urn- Great numbers of course. never reached the mouths of the rivers toward which they were headed. The herds attract the large fish of prey. and the slaugh ter is terrib ble.s
 Only two species of the British Coz Iun1bia salmon are sporting fish. The one that runs in the, greatest mum bers is the cohoe, fish which in weight ranges between and E 15 pounds 1t is usually taken by tne1- ling, for which spoons of various sizes and shapes are used, and rather light tackle generally. The cohoe is a game fish and hard fighter when looked Almost all salmon fishing for sport is done in salt water bays and inlets or in the mouths of riv- CTS.
 The cohoe will often rise to the fly and sometimes the spring salmon will do SO There are few ny fishermen in this country
 The spring is the other sporting sal-i mon The spring. or tyee. begins to run in December and continuesun- til the first part of May: Irr the North | the big springs run, weighing some< times sixty five or seventy pounds f The small herring is often used for bait, on light of slow spinning hooks The ssv5bbler'' spoon Is also | freely used for springs.
 Southern waters about the end of July. At that time there are many salmon at CampbelPs River