SALMON COME TO STAY.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 30, 30 October 1907, Page 5

SALMON COME TO STAY.

SECOND YEAR IN SOUTHERN RIVERS. SUCCESS IN HATCHING. Tho annual culling and liberation of salmon in tho Government salmon hatchery at Hak'ataremea have just been completed. ' Tho following .numbers and varieties . were liberated during tho present' month: — 11 .four and a . half years old Atlantic, .103 three years old Quinnat, 173 two years old Quinnat, 18,937 yearling Quinnat,-and-l(5o,8ol six months old Quinnat. In Apri! last .290,000 fry .were liberated, and there remain' on hand at Hakataramea 35 four and a half years old. Atlantic salmon, 50 throe years old Q.'uinifat, .15.0 two. years old Quinnat, 800 yearling Quinnat, and' 16,000 eight months old; Quinnat.

Those figures do not include 25,000 fish hatched but from ova taken from salmon which have come back up the Hakataramea and other rivers during the recent spawning season. A report presented to the Department on the run of Qiiiunat salmon in tho V/aitaki and its tributaries during tho spawning season states that thirty fish were taken out of a largo, number seen. Seventeen of these were males, and many of tho females had already shed their eggs, and were therefore useless for egg-collecting purposes. # No fewer than 25,000. eggs' were collected, and have boon hatched out at Hakataramea. Tho spawning fish, taken ranged from small males of three pounds' weight- to a largo female of twelve pounds which was the largest fish taken. It is considered that in -another, spawning, season should the Halcataranoa river bo rnimiugevon a normal supply of water, which this season it was not,.at least 100,000 og"s could easily bo obtained from returning "salmon in that . and neighbouring streams. Th« Department, has decided to take as many eggs as possible from the spawning fish next year, and hatch them out at the Hakata ramea hatchery. The present is tho second i year, for certain, that tho salmon hare comb up these Otago., streams,, so that apparently they have made -themselves quite at home m l\cw Zealand waters.