Fished locally yesterday and hooked what I thought was a chrome silver. Bonked it quickly so that I could get back in the river. As I set it in a pool of water and looked at it more closely, I noticed the good old spots on the tail - you guessed it, PINK. Oh well, I punched it and gave it to my buddy who ate it last night and said it tasted excellent. I'm not a rookie but that was certainly a ROOKIE MISTAKE.
Cuttie

Uh, No ....I think you are the only one...

I have on a few occasions. Sometimes in the excitment of the moment, you can get a little glazed. Or maybe that was the.......?

ROOKIE! :p

Cracker!

Rookie.....

Last trip to Canada had a double header, scooped up one fish (Pink) then scooped the second fish without taking the net out of the water.....whoops, it was a silver. Didn't figure our mistake out until we got back to the dock.

Its easier to do this time of year, especially in the salt when you can easily hook into silvers, pinks, or chinook.

We had a hell of a time in Sooke this summer when into the pinks, small silvers, and immature chinook all at the same time!

-rbf

When we where at Sekiu this year, the nook quota had just been filled. We had never caught pinks this far out and thought they where imature chinook until we had caught many of them. By looking at the regs we finally decided that they where pinks. Rookei Mistake.

How about this one. Fishing out of Westport this summer and catching a few fish here and there. I made sure all of my boat passengers knew what was legal to keep and that we can keep clipped coho and any King as long as it was 26" or bigger. We were catching a majority of coho when we hooked into a really nice fish. Of course I was boat driver that day. After a good fight the fish was finally boated. I looked back at the fish from the drivers seat and saw what looked to be about a 25# King. Nice and silver with a black mouth and gum line. Nice fish I thought. The next time I turned to look one of my fishing partners was tossing it over the side. He say's, "Did you see the size of that thing. That sure was a huge coho, but it wasn't clipped." So again I proceeded to give a class on fish identification. Oh well, we had a good day with 4 coho and 3 kings.

Just yesterday at Point No Point I had to help two rookies try and identify their nice chunky salmon. Checked the jaw, but it wasn't clearcut whether the gum was white or black, it was a gray color. Initially I thought they had either a coho or a chinook. So I looked at the tail, covered with black markings. That ruled out coho, since the spots were all over the upper and lower part of the tail. It took me a while to piece together all the subtle ID characteristics for the fish before I came to the conclusion that the two guys had hooked into a very nice chunky ~4-5lb humpy. Had a very slight hump, greenish cast to back, the black blotches on both upper and lower lobe of tail, early stage of hooknose formation.

This took place a few years back at wesport a buddy of mine had taken out five people on his boat (plus himself). At the end of the day after limiting out on coho and kings he went through a cooler that was stuffed with fish. He counted the kings and counted the all the coho but one that was backwards in the cooler everything was cool and headed for home. When he arrived at the dock the fish checker come up and asked him by name ( she checks him 3 to 4 days out of the week is how she knows him) He pulls out all the fish and lays them on the dock, She looks at them and says how many kings did you keep, he replys 6 and she says no thats 7. She never did anything about it knowing that it was a honest mistake for the amount of fish in the cooler.
For the past 2 years and 75+ checks that she has did on him she will add a king for a coho everytime just to give him sh#t about that one day.

One of my frist "steelhead" ever. I landed it before daylight and immediatly bonked it. (This was before the wild fish release days. ) I cut a gill raker and put it in a small manmade pool. After daylight I want to admire my "steelhead" and discovered it was a very dark silver. [Bleeeeep!]!!

Here's one for you... last week, my girlfriend's family was in town, so we went fishing with Admiralty Charters out of La Push...

We were trolling about 7 miles off La Push when my girlfriend hooked a nice fish right in the prop wash... and it turned out to be her first steelhead!

It was a hatchery fish, and she has a steelhead punchard, so in the boat it went. I did not expect to see that out there, and would have had trouble with the ID if it hadn't been for Capt. Larry, who knew what it was while it was still in the water.

-N.

wow..A steel head in the prop wash on salmon gear!Just when you think you have seen-heard it all!

I've always been told that steelhead travel in the top ten feet of water while out in the salt. This one was caught on a spoon run off a diver, right in the prop wash...

-N.