Originally Posted By: klb
The guy in the docs boat at b-10 in 2008 would have gladly released that fish. Would have been great to get a good look at it though. I had never hooked a salmon as strong, heavy and fast as that one and I have caught quite a few.






Originally Posted By: Rudy


There' s more but, I didn't want to get carried away. Never hung one on a scale because we don't kill the big ones. Large creatures none the less.



Here's a study that may be of interest to this discussion (see also, Hankin 1993):

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-209043868.html


Imagine that.... big fish beget big fish..... who'da'thunk it?

While not exactly the "silver bullet" study that some folks are demanding to show that releasing big fish makes a difference in increasing the number of larger older chinook in the next generation, one can deductively reason from this paper that giving the big bucks a free pass to the gravel certainly increases the potential to create more big fish from any given brood year.

Would love to see ODFW or WDFW try this on just one lonely stream in each respective state as a pilot project to see if it actually worked. It's really the only way to definitively find out.... run the dam experiment on one stream for two complete chinook life cycles, and let the chips fall where they may.
_________________________
"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)

"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)


The Keen Eye MD
Long Live the Kings!