The Salmon: The Extraordinary Story of the King of Fish

To watch salmon spawning is an elevating experience available to anyone living in salmon country anywhere. Yet we are glued to wildlife films for their perfecting, high-tech, laboratory touching-up, editing and enhancing. Nothing can give you the smell of the real-life river at spawning, the proximity, and the clarity.

Usually between sundown and midnight, working upstream, the hen turns on her side and scoops a depression in a sandy and gravelly substratum, laying eggs all the while in a steady outpouring. The eggs remain fertile for only one minute, so contenders vie to fertilise them, squirting their cloudy milt. Action is furious. The redds are then covered over with the same stone-shovelling to a depth of up to a foot.

I saw this process one time on a gravel-bar below my house late in November after most fish had spawned. The salmon were same-sized, around 35 pounds. I had recently handled some big salmon and although fish of this size are seldom seen in the River Helmsdale, that was the class of fish I was watching. She lay just in front of him, but instead of a vigorous and exhausting performance these two were in languorous mode. They were so large that no grilse, parr or other contenders were visibly around. Their backs were clear of the water, and the two giants seemed just to nudge each other on the redd. I had two of my children with me and, riding piggy-back, they could see it all from a better height only a few yards across the stream. I almost felt like going away out of politeness.

Enquiring later about the presence of such leviathans, a retired fishery bailiff told me he had long known about these very big salmon. They entered this river after angling had finished, often not till November, and stayed only long enough to spawn. He reckoned they were usually no more than a fortnight in fresh water.

The salmon eggs are clustered in the redds until they hatch, safe from most eventualities except major flooding when rolling rock could smash their soft mounds and disperse the egg collection for consumption by all and sundry. For there are few denizens of salmon headwaters for whom fresh eggs are not a welcome dietary enhancement. Unlucky clutches too near the surface can be frozen solid on gravel-bars exposed to hard frost which has driven down water levels. Redds are safe if there is stability in the river system until they hatch in the spring.

The actors in the conception drama have changed their costumes to participate. Both sexes’ noses become extended. If he were a medieval knight trying to unnerve his jousting opponent, the features the cock salmon arraigns himself in might fit the bill. He grows a lower-jaw projection in the form of a solid gristle hook which curves up, sometimes actually piercing the cartilage of his upper mouth, which itself arches, pre-spawning, to accommodate it. The knob has a name, the ‘kype’, but its purpose is uncertain. Salmon fishery managers have seen cock salmon thrash their heads at male parr trying to get near the females on the redds, but a knob this solid is hardly needed for that. As big cocks charge and chase each other the kype may be a proboscis for belabouring rivals. When the cock reassembles his hormones after spawning and drifts downriver as a kelt, the kype in sympathy shrinks too, till only the familiar small hook is left. Unless this happened he could never resume feeding.

The cock’s head attains super-gothic ferocity, being elongated for the spawning by three or four inches, and his skin blackens. At the finale he hardly looks like a fish at all.

When at our local hatchery we had schoolchildren on an afternoon out acquainting themselves with the species for the first time, I remember a fishery bailiff hauling a cock salmon from a deep holding tank and the wide-eyed, disgusting-looking monster squirming from side to side, eliciting a gasp of horror from the young onlookers who jumped backwards. They may have seen some X-rated movies, but this was something else.

Normally, after 50–110 days, the incubation extending to eight months in the colder Arctic, the salmon eggs break forth as tadpole-like creatures, carting as an underbelly appendage the vital egg sac. This bulging picnic is for consumption on the next stage of the pilgrimage, before they can start feeding from the outer world for themselves. As the little jelly-like creature, with its sharp, black, instantly functioning eyes expands, the picnic shrinks, and after six to eight weeks has been completely absorbed. From that time, life support is externally supplied – or existence ends.

Fry, as they are called, eat tiny crustaceans, insect larvae, nymphs and phytoplankton – a variety of miniature organisms that flourish in stream sunlight. They subsist on their hunting skills, which are rapidly developed. In summer heat food multiplies and in winter it shrinks till it disappears, their growth mirroring food availability. The further they range from the safety of shade and cover, the higher the risk of ending up in the stomach of a trout, heron, kingfisher, cormorant, or other assailant. In the fecund backwaters of Scotland’s Aberdeenshire River Deveron, where the water is clear and glassy, I have seen thousands of fry massed in corners. The fugitive instincts they need in later life are in evidence early and they move like lightning, even from passing shadows.

The parr stage is marked when they reach a couple of inches. Parr have snub noses, brownish backs, some black spotting, and a few red spots near the lateral line. This line is their nerve system, the strung-out headquarters where their sensory faculties are assembled. Parr have an easy signature in several dark bands running vertically up and down the body, no sign of which survives beyond this stage of their existence. The barring accounts for the term sometimes used to describe them: ‘fingerlings’.

Anglers know them as the energetic little fellows that can seize a fly, sometimes almost of their own size, equally in fast riffles or at the tail of the pool in torpid backwaters. We dislike holding them for fear our hands are too hot, so we customarily let them wiggle free from the hook, holding them near the surface to skip off as they hit water.

Just as seagulls are a sign of worms being turned by the plough, so mergansers are a sign of parr shoals. On the famed Restigouche River in New Brunswick, where some of the largest Atlantic salmon abide, flocks of mergansers number hundreds. They fly in menacing sinister squadrons up and down the fish-rich river, making a commotion when they all settle. In the Fifties it was found on the nearby Miramichi River that 86 per cent of the local mergansers ate parr to the tune of over a million each annually! It almost defies belief, but tests elsewhere replicate a gargantuan consumption rate. Mergansers can decimate a salmon population, faster when the water is low. Restigouche kingfishers target parr too and in times past the fishery owners painstakingly shot both mergansers and kingfishers as part of routine salmon protection.

It is perhaps one of the oddest adaptations of Atlantic salmon that some of these miniature parr can be sexually mature. As we have seen, they are capable of fertilising big hen salmon on the redds, nipping in as the cocks pause and ejecting their little sprays of milt over them. Looked at from an evolutionary point of view it completes a portrait of salmon’s variable ways of circumventing catastrophe. If all the cock fish in the sea were boiled in the lava outflow of an erupting volcano (to take a fantastic scenario), then the female fish reaching home would not be reproductively marooned. That little barred parr would be waiting, successful fugitive from kingfishers, to secure the future of one more generation of fine salmon.

Parr feed on the full range of titbits that the meagre headwaters of salmon rivers have to offer. Mayflies, stoneflies, other insects and insect larvae, worms and mussels – most things moving and many unmoving contribute to diet. Vulnerable to acidification and very low levels of pH, to chemical discharges from agricultural crops like silage, concentrated effluents, mining tailings, high aluminium and heavy metals, wood dust, oils and the like, parr need clear water and flowing streams. A simple-sounding requirement, but in a land-hungry world clean water is not such a common commodity. As they prepare to ‘smoltify’, their tails lengthen and the forks in them deepen, their fins grow, the scales soften, and they turn silvery. The great odyssey in the ocean is about to commence.

It is a matter of wonder that such small creatures can be destined to go so far. When birds migrate, they are of a similar size to their progenitors. When flounders and shad and lampreys shift in and out of the salt water on the tides they cover measurable distance on a manageable scale. Other mammal migrants travel in families and herds, adults protecting young. Caribou and elephants and migrating African antelope shepherd their young, fending off predators on their behalf. But these small salmon are unaccompanied minors, with a threat-filled odyssey ahead. On the trip they rub shoulders with whales, they are tossed and turned in the ocean’s systems, upwellings and currents and still they adhere to their programmed track. SALSEA identifies the routes and genetic families of some of the journeymen.

When common eels leave the Sargasso as elvers they allow the prevailing winds and currents to push them across the Atlantic towards freshwater lakes. The journey can take years, but the fish are essentially passive. It is the determinism of the young salmon that amazes. Predestined to reach a feeding ground, whether in the North Sea as grilse, or on the Greenland Shelf and north-east Atlantic as multi-sea-winter salmon, they are on a mission, bent on their assignation with copious krill and capelin and other nutritious sweetmeats. The whole challenge is formidable in the extreme.

The Culture

I was in a party of river rafters on the Alaskan panhandle late one summer and we had finished taking apart our gear and were waiting to be picked up. We dawdled around a river-mouth where a multitude of salmon were swarming. Biologists had blocked the small river-mouth with a grid because enough spawners were already jammed in the river and more would overload the small rivers where they bred. Families with open pick-ups were backing onto the edge of the pool and the men were snow-shovelling palpitating salmon directly into the backs of the pick-ups. They filled the rear of their vehicles, pulled tarpaulins over the still-thrashing salmon and drove off. Winter food supply all sorted.

These biblical-scale salmon runs are not all gone. In fact, they continue. It was a year predicted by fishery scientists as likely to be low on spawners, and a multitude arrived.

The world of antediluvian excess, of passenger pigeons in numbers to darken the sky, of fish which break nets and pull trawlers under the waves, of buffalo whose thundering hooves made the American plains shake from far away, these examples of Nature’s gargantuan excess still exist in parts of the Pacific salmon domain. It is reckoned that in the southern edge of range, America’s Washington State and Oregon, only a tenth of the original runs survive, but north of that runs persist.

What is unknown is the degree to which hatchery efforts by Alaskan fish and game managers are reinforcing migrations. Only genetic testing from the annual runs, against a database of the genetics of salmon used in the hatcheries, would show this, and the record was not taken. There is an element of hybridisation in the run.

I was shown a tributary of the Campbell River on Vancouver Island where pink salmon waiting to spawn were stacked like sardines in a tin. The place was dense with vegetation and only as the fishing guide pushed aside the tree branches did I make out what was in the water. It was like looking into a wine rack where the bottle heads were fish faces. Having spent over a week seeking one lonely steelhead willing to engage with my fly patterns it was a trifle galling to see a stack of fish so dense it pushed water from the river onto the bank.

In July 2010 I was in Vancouver when the sockeye were thronging the bays around the city. Rod fishers were all over, filling larders for winter. There was some edgy banter, too, about whether these super-abundant fish should be returned or not. Conservation talk about perilously damaged fish-runs, even of a different salmon species, had altered public perceptions. The language of conservation and the more acute sense that wildlife values must from now on be looked after has hyped issues, and common sense can get lost. One species gets muddled with another in the public eye and the projection of fishermen as ruthless, greedy hunter-gatherers becomes lodged in the public mind.

Long ago in the history of fish management in western American and Canadian culture it was hard to make the case for the protection of migratory fisheries against the socio-economic advantages of industrial advance, timber-logging, and the power of hydro-energy. Nowadays, in instances of survival adequacy it is sometimes hard to make the case for a controlled take.

The point about the prodigious runs of salmon into western Pacific rivers is more significant, though. The salmon runs dictated human settlement; this can be shown compellingly. No one has applied this information to settlement history in Western Europe. Here the Atlantic salmon, not the Pacific species, was the bonanza of protein delivered by migratory evolution. It is known that the Phoenicians netted tuna in the open sea two thousand years ago. Anyone capable of doing that, and capturing very large fish which were also the fastest swimmers in the sea, could with comparatively little effort have trapped salmon. And they did.

Take the Pacific coast first. In his 2011 book comparing the New World and the Old World, entitled The Great Divide, Peter Watson examines the effects of a great climate shift. From around 6000 BC sea levels began to stabilise. Glaciers had been pouring fresh water into the seas, and land had been rising as the weight of ice lifted. This process eventually levelled out. Vast shoals of salmon began to swim up the pristine rivers. A harvest of fish arrived on the doorstep of tribes on river-mouths and it came every year, regular as the turning season.

Peter Watson’s evidence comes from the fish bones in riverside human settlement remains. There, human skeletons show signs of arthritis consistent with a diet consisting predominantly of fish. From about 3,000 BC shellfish were added to the menu. Middens grew in size and it appears clans and tribes began to become more permanent and less peripatetic. Cemeteries mark places where tribes wished not only to lay their ancestors’ bones, but also places to which they lay claim.

Peter Watson’s theory is that the New World, blessed with abundant game and a wagon-train of protein in the form of Pacific salmon arriving before the onset of winter to stock the larders, had no need to evolve and develop agriculture, as had happened in the Old World. Where societies in Asia and Europe lived on cereals and domesticated animals, in the Americas people were graced with abundant wild animals for food. Chief was salmon; north-western cultures used flounders, herring, cod, sturgeon and small oil-rich fish called eulachon too, but most important of all was salmon.

The key to the harvest is the nature of tidal rivers and migrating behaviour of salmon. When the tide fills a river-mouth the fish ride in on it, holding on to the top layer so as not to scrape their stomachs on stones. This way they ascend the river to ascertain whether to continue in the freshwater environment or return to the saltwater and wait for a better moment. But as they return the tidewater level is falling. There is less water to swim in. That is when a river-bed weir structure which had been below water level a few hours earlier suddenly becomes a barrier. There is no escape over the top of it and the unimpeded water flows back through small spaces in the weir. All that is left behind is the fish. They can then be speared or caught in dip-nets, or in a manner of other ways removed from the water. Easy as pie.

There is nothing smart about this: I have seen the same thing happening in Scotland about thirty years ago on the River Ericht, a tributary of the Tay. Stone Age isn’t dead! Village boys ran about amongst the rocks as the water levels fell during a dry spell, spearing and catching salmon marooned in pools. Some of them had lamps and flares the better to see the fish as dusk drew in. That scene, long ago called ‘burning the water’, could have been taking place at any point in the last thousand years. Technically illegal at the time, the occasion pre-dated the era when salmon were accepted as being rare and in need of protection from this primitive-style capture.

Yet the riotous melee had an atmosphere of folk revelry and abandonment to primal energy which somehow stirred ancient memories. Anyone prone to get too sniffy about inappropriate salmon-catching should be reminded that some late-eighteenth-century landowners in New England, unversed in the then-unknown delights of rod-and-line fishing, travelled distances to the Connecticut River to get their fun from salmon-spearing and gaffing salmon leaping at waterfalls.

In the Pacific Northwest the background to salmon capture was quite different. There the salmon was holy and the run was a phenomenon upon which survival hung. Unsurprisingly, the ingenuity, artistry and practical neatness of some of the artefacts developed to capture and process the fish harvest from the sea were astonishing. Salmon were the lifeblood of existence for these people and their fishing culture reflected it. The most famous artwork from the Pacific Northwest is from the Haida Indians, and some of their resplendent work consists of images of fish. Salmon equalled tribe survival and the cultural acknowledgement of this is a feature of the history of the north-west.

Catching salmon was taken to a level of high art in a practical sense. Cedar bark was twined into nets and split cedar boughs were used to make nets and traps. Cedar was deployed too to make lashings for constructing lattices for stopping advancing fish, and wild cherry was tough enough for attaching shafts to nets and fish-spears. Flexible boughs of hemlock and spruce were twisted into fish-traps formed like tunnels in varied designs.

The native people were assiduous in the harvest of their prime resource. The techniques and structures were impressively elaborate. In some of the fish enclosures constructed to hold fish as the tide receded, white clam shells paved the floor, better to show to those peering down what fish were held there. There were lattice mazes with intermittent posts driven into the tidal estuary to snare salmon drifting on the tides; looking for a way out, the salmon swam further in. Different designs were used for varying stream flows and different woods were separated into functions suited to their characteristics; for instance, willow was used for major weirs, being strong and flexible and abundantly available. Stakes held their position, being pointed at the bottom and driven into the stream-bed. On the longer weirs the fishermen built spearing platforms in tripod shapes which enabled them to spot the quarry. Spears were subtly designed with stop-butts to prevent the pointed spear sections being damaged on the bottom.

Plant knowledge had progressed far on this well-endowed coastline. The Indians discovered that the stinging nettle, which grew over head height in those parts, had a property which could be used for salmon harvest. The stalks were cut, dried, peeled, beaten, shredded and then spun into a two-strand twine of exceptional strength. The wood and bone spindles used to do this were in use up to the present time.

In preparation for her brilliant illustrated study, Indian Fishing, British Columbian writer Hilary Stewart tried out these techniques herself. Using plants and different woods she constructed weirs and traps and spears and every tool connected to the salmon harvest. She found it took time and skill to replicate the old toolkits – but they worked. In Europe the same knowledge existed and nettles were considered to make stronger twine than flax – in fact the word ‘net’ derives from nettle. Cedar and willow bark were materials for net construction too. The hoops of nets might be made of bent vine maple.

The north-west Pacific peoples used only materials they had at hand. There were no imported or traded tools or materials. Anthropologists today might term their salmon capture ‘organic’. Looking back from where we are now there is something delightfully clean and satisfying about a food provision entirely serviced from the clever utilisation of local plants. Thinking further afield, there are few societies of which this remained true until recent time. The Inuits in the Arctic are an example, and there may be others in Arctic Russia, but on the bigger landmasses, where travel in any direction was physically feasible, there are few. There were the northern Saami and variously named reindeer-herders of the Asian tundra and taiga who relied almost exclusively on reindeer. Generally, though, only societies on the rim of the habitable zone were reliant on a single migratory animal.

Salmon capture was taken to a high art. If the water was moving fast the salmon were swept into a fenced enclosure. The single exit was a grid shelf sloping upwards; escaping fish marooned themselves on the grid, struggling upstream as they attempted to reach flowing water again. Neat.

Snaring fish was a various art. Rocks on the river-bed were designed in hoops or ‘wing-dams’ with the open end upstream. There could be a series of these ring structures widening out with the river. On the ebb tide salmon fell back in the river-mouth and were stranded. The rock-traps can be seen in outline today, still in place even though modern techniques have rendered them obsolete. The top rocks have been swept away in centuries of spates, but the river-bed structures remain, jawbones from which the teeth have fallen.

They are as evident in western Europe as they are in the Pacific Northwest, but in the former place no one has been looking for them or trying to build a picture of Stone Age salmon capture. If you go to the Grimersta River on Lewis, in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, a prolific salmon system, you can find the same primeval remains of what at one time supplied local Outer Hebrideans with their winter food supply. The most elementary aspects of food harvest have a tendency not to alter much.

Weirs were angled to guide fish towards a centre-pass where the trap would be positioned. I have seen salmon channelled this way in Canada for counting and stock assessment. It works unerringly and the flow of the water keeps the latticework or stake-fence in place. Sometimes densely foliated tree branches are used to fill the bigger gaps. All the system needs is salmon with the urge to go upstream and water pushing the other way. Usually the more delicate lattice structures were taken away after the salmon run and the basic structures, especially when of rock, were left in place. If necessary they were repaired and rebuilt in springtime.

Tricking salmon into net-ends or ‘bunts’ was a brain-teaser which produced ingenious contraptions. The Indians worked out that salmon could be deflected by the appearance of pendant vertical lines which, had they attempted, the fish could have swum through. But the salmon opted to go in the direction of the tidal current and could be fooled into the upper layer of the water even though the water below was a lot deeper. A loose cats-cradle of connected lines, kept in place by sinker-weights and buoys, was enough to direct the salmon to where spear-wielding fishermen awaited them.

Bunches of rye grass were tied to the floor of the loose cradle of line to create the illusion of a floor or river-bed. This kept the fish in the river’s upper level heading for the denser-woven net near the shore through which they could not escape. Guile and knowledge of the quarry were essential in the capture of this turbo-charged fish. A salmon can outswim any creature in the river, and indeed most in the ocean.