Fishkisser,
Since I don't want to advocate killing and eating Dolly Varden, I have a few qualms about what I'm going to write here. I haven't killed a Dolly since some time in the early 'seventies, but I can vouch for their flavor. A fresh-run dolly, just up from saltwater, will have meat as pink as any salmon or steelhead, and just as tasty. Since they are quite oily, they smoke up very nicely as well. The Dolly's unfortunate reputation seems to date from the period when the legislature of the then Territory of Alaska placed a bounty on them. They were suspected of being responsible for the decline of salmon runs; the rigorous scientific reasoning of this body is revealed in the fact that, at the same time, they also proposed a bounty on bald eagles. The bounties were paid on Dolly Varden tails strung on wire hoops, fifty to a hundred at a time. One of the favorite methods of acquiring these tails was to chum a pool with salmon eggs then toss in a lit stick of dynamite. Everything that washed up in the next riffle had its tail added to the hoop (after all, one dried fish tail looks pretty much like any other). In the backcountry, where hard cash was at a premium, these fishtail hoops were regarded as legal tender and led Frank Dufresne to write a hilarious story about a fisheries biologist and a poker game.