The pic of the fish on the floor is 100% coho with that lateral line and the hooked nose. Way better pic than the others.
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?
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