LETS SEE YOUR COHO SLAB

I heard a story of a 30+ pound coho caught in the skookumchuck dude swore up and down and his buddy had the one pic. Ive seen mid 20's and all mine have been in the low 20's but i know someone has a pic of a beast somewhere...lets see it..

Mine
Last years 21lbs 33x22"



2 years ago 21lbs HATCHERY SLAB

If the salt is allowed, I am betting SciGuy wins this pictorial.

NOT this year, but lots of impressive specimens in this thread....

http://www.ifish.net/board/showthread.php?p=10109858

Love a big shouldered, deep, buck Silver!

No slouch in the BIG coho department, but I just gotta say that a 20# coho is a rare and phenomenal beast. Dare I say LESS common than a 20# steelhead or a 50# king?

I fish in BIG coho country, and literally thousands of coho have come over my gunnels over the past 2 decades. In that period of time, only ONE (as in sole, singular, solitary, lone) coho has come close to the 20# mark. Actually it was just ounces shy of a true Andrew Jackson on my precision Cardoza scale, dead and bled.... so yeah... live weight including a cup or more of blood loss would have pushed the beast over 20#.

My personal best WA coho (as in me hooking/fighting/landing it) pulled the same scale to 17# dead and bled. This was a THICK-BODIED beast that hung past the ends of a 34 inch 100 qt Coleman cooler.... AFTER it had rigored up to FULL axial contracture (as short as it would ever get)

This beast conservatively measured a fork length of 35 inches with total length closer to 36. It wasn't 20 pounds....





Mebbe I need a NEW scale?

Mebbe NOT!

Yep, that thing was a serious slab!

My biggest from a river is 18, caught long before digital cameras and cell phones existed.
SF

I caught one somewhere over 20 on the Humptulips. Big fire truck. I was new to salmon fishing at the time, and I didn't realize what a remarkable fish it was, so I didn't take any pics.

Haven't caught one over 14 since.

Comment from a Prof I had in college:

The marine mixed stock fisheries on coho (sport and troll) remove the most aggressive and fastest growing fish. What's left is the fish that are slower growing.

Maybe that is why the size of adult coho seems smaller...

There is also something going on with the oceanic food chain that is leading to smaller adult salmon at age.

Mother Nature is screaming at us..........

i think francis is passive aggressively doubting my fish which of course i expect and for good reason 20lbs coho are very rare, but what you have to understand is francis's head comes up to my nipple. Im 6'5". I can palm basketballs with ease. This coho was gigantically footballed.




When my hand cant wrap that far around a fishes tail... the wodth through the fish is pretty gnar

Both those fish came fem the same river. One hatchery one wild. Identical.measurements.

Big Coho

Merg, nobody gives a fuk about your hands.

I saw some wannabe wearing a "gyde life" hat snag a big Chum yesterday. Real monster but now I'm wondering if it was his dainty fingers that made it look so big? Maybe it was the fly stuck in its ass?

Hahahahhaha im sensing some closet gay here...talking about dainty hands on your chum. Maybe stop staring at other men fishing and no one will be suspicious. Shhhhh your secrets safe from me. Wink

All I need is the hat Merg!


I'd post up a big Coho picture but Photobucket has all my stuff on lockdown. As annoying as you are it's nice to see ya posting here Merg and especially nice to see a couple fish pictures.

Very tough to get a real good photo of a big coho or chum. Regardless of their true size, most photos just don't show how big a coho or chum is or isn't. They just don't hold their girth down their tail like steelhead or kings do. Instead, they are thick across the back and you can't really photo that.

For those that are my FB friends, I put up a truly MONSTER chum photo my boy caught. It was MASSIVE and easily over 20 pounds. Not that impressive on the photo, though.
Fotobucket must have caved in.

22lb coho.



Easily a 22lb chum. I can't recall seeing a larger chum...and I've seen some pretty big damn chum. The photo really doesn't do this Chumzilla any justice!

If I had had an extra $3k laying around, I would have a replica made. This thing would be totally AWESOME up on a wall!

Parker, I've been using imgur. Not as user friendly as Photobucket but it works.

Here's one from '09 or '10. This fish was big. Ate a plug pitched into a particularly woody area, immediately wrapped itself in my line and came to the net in seconds. My biggest chrome Washington Coho, possibly shortest fight. I've caught some tomatoes that were as big or bigger but no pictures of them.

I'd measure my fingers for you guys but I don't want to embarrass Merg.

At a field station I worked at we had two male coho that were dead but still in great shape (looks-wise). They weighed exactly the same, to the ounce. About 15/16 pounds. One was long and skinny, the other was really stubby. Real deep body, deep peduncle. Just weird to get the two at exactly the same weight.

Jesus.

Those are both toads.

Dude ill get you hat but you have to dance for it. PM me your address ill send it.

The biggest coho I've ever landed weighed just over 20 . I hooked it, and it flew past the boat, hit the gravel and landed about 15 feet up on the bar. I bet the whole thing lasted less than 3 seconds.

I was glad to bash its head in, though, even if the fight was kinda lame.

No pics - this was a long time ago.

That was the thing...those 2 coho WHOOPED me hard for as lomg as any king of that size. No coho death rolls. Just big runs. Few jumps. Opened up the hook on the second one.

My first boss at WDF, when he was checking commercial catch, saw two Nisqually Winter chum at the buyer's. Together, the two went 55-56 pounds as I recall.

Biggest coho ive ever seen in person was in 1999 on the skokomish river. Thing looked like a mutant. Mid 20's. Dude had a spring scale and loudly proclaimed it 25 lbs. But as he was holding it up it would bounce between 22 and 26. Still bigger than anything ive ever seen to thia day

The Skok Coho fishery is killer. Such a shame it's closed.

WAS killer. Cohos stopped coming back like that after you moved to maui

those are all nice coho

One day last month, I thought my PB pics were toast as well. Went to the PB site and couldn't even see them on my own PAID account page.

Then magically, they were accessible to me again. Tried a linking URL for PB's 3rd party hosting, and the pic posted up just fine here to PP.

I'm thinking maybe because I'm still a paying customer ($39/yr PB-Pro account holder) there must be a grace period (thru the year end?) before they cut me off.

No way in hell I can cave to the new $400 annual fee they want. Kind of a stupid business model to cut off you entire customer base "cold turkey". They would have been much better off doing it like the govt does where they stick folks with small annoying incremental fee increases over a period of time. Nobody likes the increase, bit they;re small enough that no one decides to opt out and forgo the services.

Turn the heat up on the frogs in the pot nice and easy, and not a one of them jumps out before they're cooked. Turn the heat up abruptly, and they virtually all jump ship.... NOW!

C'mon, Merg man.... you know I love you, dude.... big manly hands nipples at eye level and all.

BUT....

I was totally OK believing that those were 20+ coho from the pics all by themselves. SERIALLY.... I was sold on the visual alone!

That is.... UNTIL you posted the measurements of 33 x 22. That's when the cogs of doubt started spinning in my head. I have this "3 x 5 picture" thing imprinted in my brain about the relative proportions of a typical thick healthy chinook. Steelhead are built like more lumber.... 2 x 4.

Coho lie somewhere in the middle. Brand new sleek hens aren't much thicker than steelhead. The REALLY nice coho are virtually all bucks. A great big buck will be approaching those typical 3 x 5 chinook proportions. That's a G:L ratio of 0.6

A coho at 33 x 22 is a G:L ratio of 0.66! Preposterous! Precious few chinook are even built like that!

Applying my fNp king formula on the chunky 17# coho I posted as an example....

at 35 inches fork length and assuming 3 x 5 proportions, the CHINOOK formula predicts...

35 x 35 x 35 (0.36) / 740 = 20.86 pounds

It clearly wasn't, so it obviously ain't.

Not trying to take away from the COLOSSAL coho specimens that you posted, Merg... they really ARE a sight to behold... just wanted you to understand where I was coming from with my comments.

One time I caught a large coho...

Heard. I know. Hha just making convo.

Funny thing was. Both those days we caught a (what i thought was a 14-17# fish) sizable coho FIRST.

The first grainy pic i hooked those 3 fish 14-18-21lbs in 3 casts.

So first fish....sizeable...was our comparison fish. Then i reeled in the hummers the NEXT fish.....so you look at that fish.....then the big one and go...ehhhh. decent fish.

Then i went home. Threw a tape and a scale on em. Blew me away. The second one i wasnt even going to tape or weigh had the knife in my hand to filet and Just offhandely thought "wonder what it compares to my other big cohos"

Digital berkely number...so yeah..not the best..said 21.6....

Then i started looking at it....the circumference of the wrist is bigger than my BEST 26.8 lbs stellhead..by a decent margin. Both carried a thickness ive never seen through the fish. Fought like it too...like trying to pull plywood sideways...just wouldnt ever turn.

I had my girlfriend verify my taping on the second one multiple times on the soft tape.

Im squezzing you can see...im barely getting around the edges.

I don't think anybody has ever been able to convince Merg that he might be wrong about something. Nice try though Francis

I date girls with small hands for exactly that reason.

Those were huge returns of big Skok. Coho back then.

Wonder why those big Skok. boys quit returning?