Salmo,

That's exactly why we elected you to be in charge of so many of our committees, you just have more finesse then me! Martha would be proud of you!

You know me as well as anyone, I always tell it the way that I see it. Sometims I am wrong, but no one ever misunderstands me. Hummm...... maybe that's why I never got to be in charge!!!

I'll keep working on my people skills, but don't get your hopes up to high.

Anyway, thanks Salmo for filling in all of the small holes that I may have missed!

Corkyking:

Two points come to my mind about those 14-20 inchers. Depending on the time of the year that you were there, the coho that you saw could have been either coho or chinook jacks. WDFW release a lot of coho and chinook jacks into Riffe during the late fall and early winter month. WDFW used to also releases spring chinook jacks into Riffe. Hell for that matter, WDFW releases everything into Riffe . . . It's their trash can for everything that ESA restricts or prohibits them from releasing into the Cowlitz!

With that being said I have seen pictures of at the local store in Mossyrock of guys holding up either chinook or coho that weight in at 18 lbs. The pictures were not that good because they were taken by the store with a cheap Polaroid camera.

From the pictures I saw, you couldn't really say for sure if it was a coho or chinook. My guess was it was a chinook. But on the other side of the picture, some of the coho that are being caught in Riffe Lake do have small developed eggs in them. This has been verified in a few studies (who's name I can't recall) and by personal communication with one of Tacoma's workers who worked on the original fish traps when the dams started up.

No one to the best of my knowledge has ever found that any of these "genies" have ever successfully spawned, but that may be because there may not be any males that have developed enough sperm sack to do their thing!

sea_claire
I have never fished for those little buggers (that's Salmo's favorite term for them), but I do have a few friends that catch a lot of them! They like using a worm and corn combo, sand shrimp, shrimp, maggots, or small spinners like wedding bands behind a couple flashers. Some guys use little spoons like "Dick-nites" and do well. I hope this helps you out.

Cowlitzfisherman