the massive loss of scales in fresh water reek spring chinook.

Let me help you with that boater.

I have not even read any of this thread, but simply put....Todd you have never been sane!

CM

The other pics were fine in their own right, but just not as convincing as to the identity of the fish.

But there's two lingering head-scratchin' puzzlers left to this story. Even in the dead fish pic, there is no protruding ovipositor. A spawner coho returning this late would be ready to spill her load within days of hitting the river.

Would've been nice to know what was inside the belly. Case of wayward immature ocean fish with a bad sense of timing? Case of testicular feminization (Google it)? Super early fall 2010 spawner? Who knows? But lack of a prominent ovipositor just does not pass the smell test.

And neither does the Ifisher's account of the clearly dead fish in the bottom of the boat. He states:

"This picture is when she first came aboard as a large hatchery steelie and this is what was going to happen !!! Then when she was set on bottom of boat she turned into ......?????"

If the still living fish had just been hoisted onto the deck and laid flat on its side, the eye would be BURIED downward into the maxillary plate trying to maintain its physiologic vertical orientation in space. But CLEARLY, the coho in the bottom of the boat is neurologically dead.... look at the eyes, they tell no lies! And yet in the hero shots of the kid (supposedly taken immediately AFTERWARD), the fish is still neurologically intact.



I went back and looked at the photos in the dude's gallery... and the numeric order of image tags from his camera show the horizontal hero shot was taken first, the vertical hero shot second, and the DEAD fish shot dead last.... CIMG2560, CIMG2562, and CIMG2563.

Logical conclusion, at least in my mind, is the fish was bonked shortly after the hero shots were taken. Big, bright, and clipped.... honestly, who could resist the temptation?

Wonder how many here still think the obviously dead fish was turned loose?

Since the board seems to be in the mood for such threads, when I get home tonight, I will post another fish ID stumper... no access to the pic where I'm at right now.

Should give a few of our veteran 10%'ers another chance at redemption.

Stay tuned.

Well I flat ass sucked on this one. I think it's time you take a look at my eyes for me Francis.... I didn't even once figure for a coho...

Oh and that coho of mine, is a king....

Keith

Doc,

You should have been a cop. When the eye is dazed like the one in the floor pic, its a dead fish. It has seen the club already! The regs should be changed in all Oregon waters to say.........

Open to retention of all hatchery salmon and or steelhead all year. ODFW does not want these fish spawning in the wild so why on Earth is there any time that you can't keep a hatchery fish in any river.

+100,000,000

Cherry Salmon!

WDFW doesn't want them spawning either.

I agree with you, Kev.... my boat policy is that ALL legal hatchery fish MUST die. The only point I would add is that there needs to be legal space on the tag so as not to exceed that daily limit.

I tried to make a case for bonking hatch kings in GH this past year, i.e. those incidentally caught while targeting coho.

The rebuttal I got back (and a legitimate one at that) is that doing so could create an incentive for folks to target and/or continue fishing specifically for that lone hatchery king. That would keep such folks on the water longer, targeting kings and sorting thru a lot of wild ones, and unnecessarily killing a few in the process. By not having that hatch king retention, folks simply catch their legal limit of coho, then exit the fishery for the day. Overall wild chinook impact is thus minimized.

I see the merits of both sides.

Rats....that scale loss had me doubting, but it was such a nice steelhead.......NOT


Wait!! maybe that's not the same boat, day, fish!!!

Chinark!

Cherry Chinark.

Damn, got me. At least Todd wasn't right.

Canyonman, look who's talking, your insane, trying to pick up a Forks chic proves it.

All I can say after looking at these different posts is it is whatever'n the hell I marked on my punchcard!

Makes me wonder how many, if any, times I've punched the wrong fish????

I can 100,000,000,000,000 % guarantee to you that if you had been there and seen that fish in person, you would have had no doubts in it's ID.

Pictures can either lie, or not tell the whole truth, or tell all the truth but the poster gives out misleading information about he fish, etc.

I agree Parker. You'd be able to look the fish over and determine the species.

Ho boy.... looks like me and a couple other keen eyes stirred up a hornet's nest over the fate of the mystery fish over on Ifish.

or atleast smell it