THE RESULT OF ONE DAY OF SPORT IN MONTEREY BAY-THIS CATCH OF SEVENTEEN SALMON WAS MADE BY MR. J. PARKER WHITNEY WITH A TEN-OUNCE ROD

to fetch the salmon up where the sinker can be reached from the boat side.

This is accomplished by allowing the fish to sink down and play slowly about, rowing the boat over him, keeping up a gentle but strong pressure on the rod. The game commences when the salmon is brought near the surface. Then the salmon will frequently strike off on the surface in a straight line several hundred feet. In some instances I have trembled for my line, being compelled with all the strain I dared put on to allow the fish to take out within fifty or a hundred feet of all I had, although the boat was being propelled as rapidly as two men could row toward the fish; but rarely have I paid out over four hundred feet.

I have lately adopted a better method of attaching and liberating the sinker, by having the four-ounce lead round in tapering form with a small ring soldered in one end; up the line six feet from the hook and part of it I tie in two swivels nine inches apart. I then tie a short piece of weak cotton twine to the bottom ring of the upper swivel and to the upper ring of the swivel below, having threaded the cotton twine through the ring of the sinker; shorten the cotton twine to four inches in length between the two swivels, which loops up four or five inches of the regular linen line. The salmon striking and holding the baited hook and giving the consequent strong pull, breaks the cotton line and the sinker liberated and of light value, drops away in the sea, leaving the salmon free and unimpeded for his vigorous and gallant fight, except for the fine line and rod strain.

Not so often as in fresh water does the salmon leap out of the water, and seldom more than two or three times. My daily catch has averaged nearly eight fish and given most exciting sport. The careful weight of the first sixty-nine salmon caught I found to be eleven hundred and thirty-three pounds, or almost sixteen pounds each; the smallest was a grilse of five pounds and the largest of thirty pounds.

All of my catches have been in the early morning, starting out at four o'clock and getting back to the Hotel del Monte generally for lunch. The excep

tions were from all-day fishings when I secured notable catches. As with trout, I have found morning the best, and after ten o'clock the fishing has generally fallen off. Two or three miles of rowing has been required to reach the fishing ground from the Monterey pier, and the fishing ground I have generally found to extend over an area of about two miles long by a mile wide, although I have no doubt that the salmon could have been found out two or three miles beyond that limit. I have caught in addition to the salmon brought in, many rockfish, called bluefish by the fishermen, but not the bluefish known in the east, weighing about five pounds each, and many codfish of five and six pounds and flounders of five and eight pounds, besides small sharks and occasionally mackerel and yellow tails.

In a dead calm the fishing about ceases, as with trout in trolling; but with the return of the breeze the fishing takes on again. The method forcibly reminds me of the trout. Shyly at times, and again boldly, the salmon takes, sometimes striking several times at the bait; at times biting off half the bait and following up for the balance; and in some instances following up the bait, with frequent half-decided action, until it reaches within ten or fifteen feet of the boat. It then often proves a close call in a double sense, as the fish, if a heavy one, will carry out the line so rapidly that the risk is great of carrying off the whole outfit. In boldness and general action the salmon have reminded me constantly of troutpaying but little attention to the boat, occasionally passing in sight within a few feet and striking on the surface at an occasional small fish and at times going entirely out of the water in pursuit.

For experiment I have tried the spoon, but fancied I did not do as well as with the bait, although I caught salmon with it. The salmon seemed to have more squid inside than other food, although at times full of sardines, and oftener with anchovies. Sardines are, however, the best bait and squid indifferent, as it has insufficient body to hold, and I have had some success with smelts and young shad. Once or twice, out of bait, I used a strip of salmon belly, which did tolerably well.

One day well outside the bay where the

water was quite clear and a large school of salmon present, I observed several salmon following up my remnant of bait which I was reeling in to replenish, and they followed up to within fifteen feet of the boat. The small fish, which the salmon follow into the harbor, come in countless numbers, often in large, moving masses of many acres in area, and their presence is often indicated to the fishermen by the hovering fulmars, shearwaters, shags and other predatory birds. These are often seen busily at work on the salmon grounds, and often indicate the most favorable places for fishing. While the salmon evidently come in schools at first, it would appear that they scatter more or less about, instead of remaining closely together, although they mass when in the vicinity of large schools of small fish. The fishermen are guides for each other, and may be scattered over a square mile without doing much catching. Presently one or two commence hauling in, which brings all the others to the vicinity, and the fishing goes on merrily for a while. Then a scattering takes place again, and a regathering afterward. Still, I have found about as good success in passing up and down in certain localities, as in following the fishing boats.

The average time I have found necessary to fetch my salmon to gaff I should estimate at eight minutes, occasionally less and sometimes fifteen or sixteen minutes. I believe, however, I am more rapid in landing salmon and trout than the average fisherman, many of whom take more than half an hour with a salmon and ten or fifteen minutes with a twopound trout. I have never, except in very rare instances, been more than half an hour in landing a salmon with a fly rod, and though I have taken, I may safely say, during many years of trout fishing many thousands of trout weigh ing from two to over eight pounds, I have never to my remembrance been so long as fifteen minutes in landing a trout unless from an outside hold or in very quick running water. I have found, notwithstanding the prejudice I had against steel rods, such to be almost perfect for trolling and altogether superior to the cheap bamboo rods which are of late in vogue. They are much lighter and more flexible,

and I would have no hesitancy in taking a trial with one over a sixty-pound salmon or a seabass of the same weight. I have several of these steel rods and have never broken one over a salmon.

The market fishermen lose fully a half of the salmon they hook by the straight over-hand pull and no give except that which is compelled by want of strength. The line and hooks are strong and the fishermen have no time to wait. If the salmon are plentiful they do not much mind the losses, which often occur from neglect in using the gaff. With the light rod the fish, if hooked, is seldom lost. I brought in several with skin holds, which would not have held for a moment in hand fishing. One salmon which I caught had been on one of the market fishermen's line, and had a torn-out hook mark in his mouth and a cruel gaff cut between his ventral and anal fins. The gaff cut was nearly three inches long and had penetrated nearly to his other side, and was too serious to have ever healed up again.

The fish was a large one, of about twenty-five pounds in weight, and in fine condition, although the gaff cut was evidently two or three days old. The wound had evidently made but a slight impression on the appetite of the fish as it struck fiercely and fought hard. I found the salmon which exhibited the most gamy qualities to do their fighting near the surface, seemingly to disdain any depth after once being brought up, and often make a complete circuit of the boat. Certainly a more beautiful sight than a salmon exhibits with his brilliant colors as he strokes along with his powerful tail near the surface in the clear water and bright light never gladdened the heart of a fisherman. We all know the dangers to which the salmon is exposed in fresh water, and from which but few survive. If they have the exposures in the deeper waters of the sea which follow them in the shoal water of Monterey bay, their lives are indeed beset with constant risk. I saw often in the bay on the fishing grounds the enemies and consumers of the salmon at their deadly work in the form of seals, porpoises, sharks, killers and sea-lions.

One morning, which was very foggy, I was startled by the uprising of a curi

ously peaked hump, two boat lengths ahead. It seemed to me like a boat's end elevated with a black cloth over it, but a moment later revealed the half of an enormous bewhiskered sea-lion, which, raising itself half out of the water, revealed a form which must have weighed at least a ton. In its mouth was a large salmon which it had evidently just it had evidently just caught. The insatiable appetite of these monsters of the deep, of which hundreds abound in the vicinity, would indicate that they are not slow to avail themselves of the salmon invasion. "Well," I thought, "the part which man plays in the devastation of the salmon in the sea is but trifling compared with that which occurs from their natural enemies beneath the waters." One of my men told me also that one day as he was hauling in his salmon he found the haul temporarily checked, after which, in completing his haul, he found half his salmon bitten off by a seal, and shortly after saw the seal swimming off with the half salmon in its mouth..

On the Pacific coast there are five distinct varieties of salmon, some of which are not highly esteemed for food. Those of Monterey bay are of the highest class, the king salmon or quinnat (Oncorhynchus tschawytscha). These are of the Sacramento, San Joaquin and Columbia rivers. As an article of food they are probably of more importance than all the other fish of the Pacific coast. In the Columbia river the average weight is twenty-two pounds. In the Sacramento river the average is sixteen pounds. Occasional instances are quoted of from sixty to one hundred pounds. In addition to the enormous quantities which are seined on the coast and in the rivers for immediate eating, there are annual packs from the Sacramento, Columbia and up the Yukon and other streams of the Pacific coast of fully 1,500,000 cases of forty-eight pounds each, representing fully an annual pack of more than 70,000,000 pounds or some 4,500,000 salmon, and in exceptional years as high as 7,000,000. There is no apparent diminution in quantity. The other varieties of salmon are known as the blue back (O. nerka), which weighs from five to eight pounds, which predominates in the Frazer and Yukon

rivers; the silver salmon (0. kisutch), weighing from three to eight pounds, which is found in nearly all of the salmon rivers of the coast; the dog salmon (O. keta), from eight to twelve pounds, found in the Columbia and Frazer rivers; the hump-backed salmon (0. gorbuscha), found in the northern streams. The latter is the smallest salmon on the coast, seldom running over three or four pounds. The salmon of the Pacific coast differ but slightly in color about the head and tail, where they have some brown spots, from the general salmon family, the other differences being in an increased number of gill rakers, as well as glands about the stomach and the number of rays in the anal fin.

The quinnat or king salmon is as perfect in form, color and activity as any salmon could possibly be. Its silvery gleaming is as brilliant as any of the salmon family. On the sides of the head it has a distinctive coloring, a peculiar metallic lustre of pale olive cast, that which might arise from a mixture of lead and silver highly burnished. A feature which has strongly attracted my attention has been the changing colors of the quinnat in salt water. With every changing angle of the sunlight the flashing, iridescent hues have varied with kaleidscopic rapidity from the deepest olive green to a light green, and a gleaming white to a silvery, and from a dark brown to a black and then so neutral as to be lost for a moment from view. Changed, however, indeed are the salmon or the possible few which survive to return from the spawning season to the lower waters. From the day of estuary passage a falling off in every respect commences. Food is no longer sought or taken. The silvery sheen and iridescent hues slowly disappear. The stomach and its auxiliary glands shrink away to one-tenth of the normal size. The color gradually changes to black. The flesh becomes dry and insipid, and if the fish ever returns to the sea after a long passage to the headwaters of its stream, it comes in a sadly demoralized condition, with its fins and tail worn away, bruised, blotched, distorted and often blind.

It is not probable that the salmon is a very deep-water fish, or that it goes far from its native stream, but seeks its food

from the small fish which keep the vicinity of the shores. The fact that they are seined every month of the year on the Pacific coast to a considerable sense evidences this.

It is clear that the salmon of Monterey bay are those which belong to the Sacramento or San Joaquin river group. Their average weight confirms this and that they are not of the Columbia river. The distance from Monterey bay to San Francisco bay, into which the Sacramento and San Joaquin pour, is about ninety miles. Monterey bay and that of Santa Cruz, a few miles north, and at some of the sounds and bays far north on the coast,

are the only places known where the salmon is found engaged in taking its food, and where it can be caught with fresh fish bait. The bay certainly presents a favorable opportunity for studying the salmon in its normal condition, engaged in seeking its natural food. Here its manners and peculiarities can be examined with ease and some knowledge obtained of the class of food upon which it best thrives.

It may be claimed by those fishermen who are so wedded to the artificial fly that trolling with a spinning anchovy or sardine is not the proper deceit for the king of fish, but it may be a question if