I ran across this while wasting time at work: http://www.goldseal.ca/wildsalmon/salmon_history.asp?article=16

It's amazing to think that PNW salmon as we know it have been around ~24 million years and to date now they may just be decades away from extinction!

I'd like to have hooked one of these 200 pound salmon though...

"One now extinct salmonid from this era is the saber-toothed salmon. Weighing hundreds of pounds, it had a pair of enormous curved teeth, but fed chiefly on plankton"

I think a few years back they found the fossilized skeleton of one of those saber tooth salmon at the Skokomish River...

Fish on...

Todd

They left out the part about those fossils being entombed in a monofilament net that had been discarded 50,000 to 1.6 million years ago when the Skok tribe had an ongoing trade with Asia.

Please pass the steel leaders

The ones on the Skok didn't turn out to be sabertooth salmon, but rather sockeye.

So weird, the photos after you follow the link are mine. I took them in the basement of the Burke Museum six years ago.

Here's a more recent story on the fossil Skok sockeye.

Actually stlhead, I saw pics of unearthed cedar bark gill net pieces in the Little Creek Casino. Don't know how old they were, but I found that interesting.

I have no idea when monofilament became a "traditional way", however.

Maybe if we would fish in the traditional way from 150 years ago the Nates would to.

Deal!!!!