still think its a Coho...c

I'd bet my left nut that its a coho!

With all of the collective knowledge posted on this thread, it proves only one thing... OK two...

1) A bunch of you don't know what the f**k you're talking about.

2) The rest of you just got lucky.

I just hope that if any of y'all come out my way to fish in the next month, enough of you can figure out which big-spotted, olive/bronze/gold tinted fishies ought to be released to prevent fishing deep into escapement.

Geez Doc, don't you ever go to sleep (looks whos talking).
Only a few more days now, too bad I won't get to practice at LaPush this weekend with the big ocean predicted.

Steve

this is a after thought, but came up with it at work this evening. some thoughts or members, said fish was a hybrid. correct me if'en i'm wrong. hybrids are sterile, right? meaning do not breed or spawn... if this was a hybrid it had no bizzness returning to a river. it would have stayed in the salt just getting bigger.

When the species are related closely enough and the habitat they occupy has considerable overlap, the sterile hydrid vigor theory you speak of may NOT hold true.

I believe there are naturally-spawning rainbow-cutthroat hybrids in some of the most famous SW tailwater trout fisheries.

We had chinook/pink hybrids returning to the UW hatchery back in the 1970s. They called them "chinks" and they were sexually mature, but perhaps not fertile. No reason this one couldn't be a coho/chin hybrid. I saw an identical fish (clipped) last weekend from the S Sound.

I hear you. That first image shouted Net Pen stray.

My vote goes toward chinook becuase them spots on the back are rather large for a ho.

Jake

You Know, The spots on top of the head look a lot like an alantic, but the ones on the back look like a king. Every Alantic I have seen has those big round spots on its cheek. Rather than a King/Coho it looks a little like a king /alantic mix, which could make sense since any pen stray would have a hard time finding a mate. Otherwise I would actually take the logical conclusion and call it a coho. Really does look like it could be a hybrid though.
I just saw a WDFW poster that claims the definitive character between chinook and coho is the gum line, so I would say its a definite keeper under the states eyes (when open). Since it would ahv eto be a jack anyway if it was a king, I wouldn't feel real bad about keeping it anyways (again, if open for coho).

for the record, that is not an atlantic.

Atlantic Salmon usually (always?) have big black spots on their gill plates. These spots are not present in the gill plates of the fish in the pic

The fish appears to have a shortened opercle (gill flap) which can be a symptom of stress - being raised in a hatchery for instance. Could just be the angle of the photo, but it looks shortened to me.

Is it possible the fish could have been raised under stressful conditions?

ClearCreek

Good observation CC... it most certainly had an underdeveloped operculum on that side... the other side was perfectly intact with no exposed gill filaments.

Yeah.

I noticed the operculum thing too.

No, really.

Scales, Spots, color--Jack King

It's a coho jack, the experts have weighed in give it up.-TBJ

Hehehhehe... Dan said orperculum...
No way in hell that thing is an atlantic. I'm still saying chinook Jack, although the new pics make me wonder just a bit. Don't much care what the experts say on this one. Good post FNP.

How do you make a chinook jack out of that fish... That's it. Tomorrow I'm going to take a picture of a king jack when we land one. It should help solve the question....

By the way, what's our fearless leader say it is?? Bob??

Keith

If it were that clearcut, I would have never bothered posting the pic. or I would have posted this one instead:



Over 250 votes and so far it's about 3:2 chinook.