I was fishing the North Fork Lewis (Cedar Creek) and was releasing allJack Kings ( rules stated, "release all chinook"). Several people I talked to said it was legal to keep all Jacks regardless. As long as they were under 24". Can anyone clarify?
What a nuthouse! I went up there Sunday and it looked like a circus! Saw some fish being caught however. Was grossed out by several piles of human waste including toilet paper! ( six feet from where people were fishing!).....disgusting!!!!

someone has to know, come on guys and gals!

I gotta think that "release all chinook" means let them go regardless of size.

Sounds like creative regulation interpretation to me.

All kings on the lewis must be released they are a federally protected fish, one of the only true wild fall kings in the columbia basin. Besides anything that is not adipose clipped you can't keep anyway.

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I wonder why everyone is keeping them. One old guy a couple weeks back had a trout rod and caught at least ten while I was there. I know they weren't all silvers.
Do jacks return back to the ocean, and later in life freshwater to spawn?

As I understand it jacks are capable of spawning, as they are sexually mature males. Even though they are small, they will most often produce normal sized offspring since their mates would be normal size returning fish. (Jacks are all males).
Anyone know if I'm misinformed?

I was looking for info on the life cycle of jacks and couldn't find much. The best I got was an e-mail reply from WDFW. I wish I would have saved it, anyway it was on the lines of jacks are males returning and maturing 1-3 years before the others of the same year class and they think the reason is so there will always be some males to fertalize the eggs in case there was a disaster with the normally returning year class. Chinook have the most jacks, coho have fewer and other salmon species have few to none. The jacks die after attemting to spawn, the normal year class larger males will run them off the redds.
The way I read the regs for that area is the only jacks you can keep would be coho .

You can keep the jack silvers but only the jack silvers that are adipose clipped. As far as the chinook I personally would'nt even take them out of the water because they are a threatened species and if a gamie sees you harassing them adults or jacks its a large ticket. They sure are agressive though and alot of them this year. I was out yesterday on the 26th and we hooked 6 adult chinook and adult silvers while fishing. We also released another dozen of each species in jacks.

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Addict,

Wild chinook (unmarked)in the Lewis River are listed as threatened species under the ESA. I don't have a copy of the state fishing regs at the moment, but the federal listing should be enough to place them off limits for harvest. That would include jack chinook.

Jack chinook that mature sexually at age 2 or 3 instead of the usual age 4. With fewer seasons of ocean growth, they are small fish. They are fully capable of spawning with large female chinook, but the large males do try to keep them away from the spawning redds. It must be one of those "all's fair in love and war" things. The jacks, like other salmon, die after spawning - or attempting to spawn.

I don't know how much enforcement effort is out, but it doesn't seem like a good time to not be able to tell the difference between jack chinook and silvers. It'd be a shame for some poor sot to get a hefty ticket for a fish that is worth more in the river than on the table.

Determined poachers don't want our advice, but we'd be doing ignorant anglers, and the fish, a favor to remind them of what is legal to keep and what isn't.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

thanks for the replies. I did not know that jacks are capable of depositing sperm and fertilizing an adult redd. You learn something every day!