Wow very intrigued... Now who wants to bet we won't be seeing this discovery utilized in our hatcheries anytime soon

The fish has to survive being caught. If a Chinook has the genetics to mature at age-7, as they used to, what chance does it have to live that long in the face of all the marine fisheries?

We have known for decades that age at maturity had a strong genetic component. WDG tried to take advantage of this with Skamania Summers. They bred the bigger, older fish with each other and got significantly larger adults back. Just too few, due to the increased at-sea losses, to sustain the program.

If you want the largest fish to return you have to not kill them before they do. Which means you fish in the bays and rivers after they stopped most feeding.

I, for one, hope we never see this discovery utilized anywhere. Ma Nature doesn't make mistakes (at least not long-term ones). There's an important reason for the diversity of age classes. In fact, I think it's safe to say that if we tried to selectively breed hatchery salmon for size, we'd virtually wipe them all out in ocean fisheries before the first brood returned to any system to spawn.

To Carcassman's point, we have largely eliminated the upper end of the range by requiring a 7-year chinook to survive 5 to 6 years of commercial and sport fishing in order to return to its home river at its intended potential. Those are some long odds, and they do a lot to explain why you see fewer and fewer 50-pound specimens caught as time goes on.

Size diversity aside, I think one of the best arguments for restricting commercial harvest to terminal areas is that all the fish in a terminal area are as large as they're going to get, and that's more dollars per fish. You'd think that would be an exciting prospect for the commercial market, but like Keta (a former trawler) explained to me in another thread yesterday, the status quo assures the commercial processors a maximum harvest level, and they're generally disinterested in setting any new precedents that might change that.

Been a while but if memory serves me the QIN did big fish to big fish with success. Now the down bit it was Steelhead and they do not suffer the same marine harvest as salmon do. I am not even certain if WDF&W's spawning protocols would even allow it be it salmon or Steelhead.

It's Mother Nature that is trying to get the big old fish back. That is how the system was designed.

I also find it hard to understand why we chase a fish so we can catch it at a smaller size when it comes back to a predictable place at a larger size.

Low holin' your "buddy" that's fishin' further upstream. Just another way to one-up the competition.

We've just taken it to the uber-extreme where the entire PNW is gettin' low holed in Alaska.

The funny thing is no one is intentionally doing anything inherently wrong or illegal.... only what's allowed by law.

And how many people from here go up to AK or BC to intercept those fish?

Hatcheries need to raise big on big with some incorporation of a few wilds. It should be big on big for each year class and not just the largest fish. The genes for jacks and or 6 yr fish are in the 3 and 4yr fish even if they do not breed them. Raising salmon in this manner will allow for more natural selection as opposed to the way that things are done now which allows for much less natural selection. Yet they keep doing the same thing and wonder why the genes are diluted and the fish returns get worse and worse. It would be a simple way to improve the rings and would cost little to nothing to implement.

If the hatcheries spawned big to big and got all the "grow big" genes in the salmon they would still only show up marginally in the return because the fishery would take them out. To gro big they not only need the genetics to live long but they have to be aggressive feeders. Which means aggressive biters which means dead fish in the boat.

You want big salmon? Stop killing them in the marine waters for the next 20 years.

Getting big is not all about being agressive feeders. I can eat the same doughnuts and not get fat whereas somone else I know can eat the same doughnuts and gain 2 lbs and others only need to sniff the doughnuts and they gain 1lb. It has to do with good survival instincts and fitness overall primarily. That is what the hatcheries need to select for and there will be more overall which means more for those in the marine waters and more in the rivers. It is a win win that is being missed out on because of policy and red tape.

As a matter of fact I do 2-3 trips a year (5-7 day trips) during the summer months as I find it cheaper than owning a boat, fuel, tabs, insurance etc. Takes me 5 hours to get to Westport and almost the same amount of time up to Ketchikan to POW, Juneau, Sitka or out to Pelican AK on the coast! Win/Win IMHO and such liberal limits too! I see the handwriting on the wall in this state...

I once took a trip to Old Harbor (Kodiak). That fishery is targeting BIG kings bound for the Skeena as well as lots of others destined for streams in Cook Inlet, the Gulf of Alaska, BC and the Columbia. Lots of white jawed kings headed to other places than Alaska.

It was never intended as a meat run.... just a chance to catch and release a 60+ salt-caught chinook. I walked away with a single dinker king and an unlucky chum... but the bonus was the lodge fish cutter loaded me up with collars whacked off other clients kings.

Kinda shows a pattern, doesn't it?

Yes, the horrendous under-reporting of CWTs in the SEAK troll fishery. I am willing to bet that the majority of those tags were recovered in the drag fisheries.

I understand that this thread has taken a little different direction from the initial intent, but going back to the article: it was researched in Norway and Finland. I am assuming that it refers directly to Salmo salar. Not directly to Oncorhynchus. I wouldn't at all be surprised if there was some gene specific to Pacific salmon and to Chinook in particular, but that is nowhere stated in the article. Apples to Apples?

In most salmonids, size is determined by age at maturity. This is particularly true of the semelparous (spawn once). Over the century plus of hatchery operations this has been shown time and again. But, as many here have noted, if you put intensive fisheries on immature fish the likelihood of that fish reaching its genetic possible age are low.

This is also why triploids are popular in food production; all they do is grow. They don't develop gonads, which is a waste of energy for an organism that is supposed to only be eaten.

The gene crosses species (as many others do). It's common for the same gene coding for the same protein to be universally found across the animal kingdom .

With all salmon sharing a common ancestor, I would have no problem accepting that the same genetic mechanism for determining size is shared in common.