They knew the fish must have hatched from one of the many eggs the department had planted in Manitou River not quite two years before — eggs from parent fish which did not mature until they were four years o'd, at which age they assumed the hump, the beak and the bright-red color. In the second place, the parent fish seldom reached a length of 12 inches and a weight of one pound, but this two-year-old specimen, measured and weighed on the accurate equipment of the research station, stretched just over 15 inches and hefted well over a pound.

In the days and weeks that followed, reports of the strange new red fish trickled into the fish-research station. John Dobell, a Lands and Forest conservation officer assigned to seek out red fish for examination at the station, took 18 in the Manitou River. Eight other anglers in the area turned over a total catch of 42. Others were hooked or seen at a dozen places

in the great crescent of Georgian Bay from Tobermory to Byng Inlet. A few were reported in Lake Ontario's Bay of Quinte and in Shelter Valley Creek and Wilmot Creek, less than 100 miles down-lake from Toronto. Finally, when by late fall the number of red fish sighted in one stream, the Manitou River, added up to 400, the government fish researchers could say, albeit with fingers crossed:

“Salmon are back in the Great Lakes.”