Good point. Now I'm second guessing myself.......Thanks.

Chumeye

Good points, all. And I see the pendulum has swung for a few folks.

Maybe cutting this thing open might reveal a few more clues. Any resident experts out there on fish ID based on the number of pyloric caeca?



I didn't count 'em all but the one thing that struck me was the SIZE of the caeca. Rather than the 1-2" spaghetti strands we're all used to seeing in river fish, these were HUGE.... the size of half-cut green beans! Serious digest activity going on, for sure. And look at the size of the stomach! Hard to believe there could be that much digestive capacity in an 8 pound fish!

And distinctly missing from that massive gut-pile.... NO SEX ORGANS! This sucker was at least a year from spawning!

A view of the tail would do wonders in the ID dept.

My first reaction is sockeye but then I tried to guage the color of the meat in your gutpile pic. Sockeye would be deep red but the meat on that critter looks a bit less so.....more orange-ish albeit with some glare.

I reluctantly go w/ chum.

Looks like an immature chum to me.

Fish on...

Todd

As clues leak out, starting to look like a doggie.
From what I can see, the wrist looks narrow, another chum trait.

The paler flesh might make a chumly, too.

Chum, the size of the stomach is characteristic of chums. They have a very acidic digestive system, the gelatinous pile of white stomach contents could be any thing from squid to jelly fish. It is all digested so fast that it is difficult to identify stomach contents unless they just ate something. They do eat jelly fish.

The best feature used to identify salmon, particularly immature, on the high seas is the tail. Each species is different. Chum have black between silver on the tail rays. You can see that in the first picture. and the picture below, a sport fishing gear (pink buzz bomb) caught chum on a Japanese research vessel in the Bering Sea. Hook and line is the preferred way to catch salmon that are going to be tagged and released. The research vessel crew all participate in catching salmon for tagging though most fish with a handline, a plastic bottle float, and red lures they tie themselves.

Sockeye for sure. The minute I read "blue back" I thought you were catching Kokanee. In Idaho and Montana they call there Kokanee "Blue backs". Since Kok's are landlocked Sockeye and your fish looks like a big Kokanee. I'm guessing its a Sockeye that is expressing traits like a Kokanee.

The Doc is very tricky about leading folks down the wrong road.

Chum

If you need to get technical, then click the link below.

http://www.npafc.org/new/publications/Bu...%28Urawa%29.pdf

Yeah, you're probably right. Its probably something weird like a Chockeye. The answer could be in the tail. We don't have a good shot of the tail in any of the provided evidence. Maybe doc could produce additional evidence.

Easy one, definately Chum dog, otherwise known as Keta! A lot of fine smoked salmon is actually keta. In Ketchikan, I have seen a lot of them taken during the feeder king/blackmouth fisheries on troll gear. Down here in Washington, it is farely rare to get one. Three were rumored to have been caught in the strait amongst the guys last season.

Now that would take all the fun out of it

This from a paper I found Googling "pyloric caeca"....

Welch: Gut Structure of Pacific Salmon ...

ABSTRACT

The stomach (but not intestine) of chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) is greatly enlarged relative to other species of Pacific salmon. This permits the exploitation of gelatinous zooplankton (jellyfish, ctenophores, and salps) as a major food source, which are an abundant but low energy prey unused by other species of salmon.

The unique gut structure of chum therefore allows efficient feeding on a little-exploited branch of the food web and reduces inter-specific trophic competition.

Must give credit where credit is due... Jaydee was the first to note the caudal peduncle and ask specifically for a tail shot (which not surprisingly was intentionally cropped out of the first pic I posted).

Here ya go....







And despite the decidely blue back, these views definitely sway the pendulum in a canine direction.

Good thread (as usual) Doc.

Couple other features that seal the deal as chum...

1) Sockeye have no dark markings in the mouth or gumline. The mouth is white or perhaps a faint washed out gray. Look carefully at the fine linear black marks on both the upper and lower gumlines. (Yeah, I know, I should have taken a better open mouth close-up.)

2) And finally as others have already noted is how they cut. Sockeye have the most vibrant candy red flesh you'll ever see on a salmon. This fish clearly did not.

Good point, WN1A.... definitely see that in my close-up tailshot.