Angler hooks trouble when he reels in a coho salmon

More on the fish Bluefin(Joe) reported about.

http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090116/NEWS/901160220/1350?Title=Angler_hooks_trouble_when_he_reels_in_coho

Mike, I was reading that the main differences between Coho and steelhead is the black gumline of the Coho and the distribution of spots on the tail.  Is there anything in the Press Dem picture that accompanied the article that determines which it is?

Doug

Doug I think that's the only reliable way Joe will probably chime and give us more info, after fishing for Salmon for so many years in the Ocean you always check the gums.  Check out  page 73 of the regulations http://www.dfg.ca.gov/regulations/08-09-inland-fish-regs.pdf

Thanks Mike,

I was just wondering if there was something I was missing in the picture.

They shouldn't be giving up the name of the guy who caught it to the ff&g

I'll have some more time to post on this later.

Bluekayak, who are you referring to?

The guy at Kings should have never posted the pic. If he is deposed by the Feds do you really think he won't give up the identity? From the article it appears the person who caught the fish is already known. If the angler can't tell the difference he shouldn't be on the water. I saw the pic of the fish and from the pic it just doesn't look like a steelhead trout.The body shape is all wrong.Looks like a salmon. Big time.

When I first saw the picture on King's website, I couldn't believe it, but at the same time I wasn't surprised.  Last season and this season, ID flyers were given to Kings along with OPS and Western Sport.  I asked them to give them out to every angler buying steelhead gear for the Russian.  Granted, not every angler buys there gear from these three shops, but it was a good start to get the word out.  I specifically gave them to Nick Wheeler at Kings and he was the one who posted the photo.  I was pretty disappointed that Nick didn't catch it, he's a good guy and always been helpful to me, and after all he didn't kill the fish.  In the article Nick says its very hard to tell the difference between steelhead and coho.  It's not if you look at the lower jaws, which are shown on the flyer I gave him and the back page (in color) of CDFG's freshwater regulations.  I'm glad he did post the picture though as now maybe CDFG will listen to me after three years of telling them to not clip the adipose fins on these fish.  Even though this angler made a mistake, it was a big one.  I've heard a lot of people say it wasn't the anglers fault or its not that big of a deal, he shouldn't be fined.  Think of it this way, what if he was holding a black abalone from Salt Point?  Anyways the reporter asked me if I think he should be fined and I said that its not up to me, its up to either CDFG or NOAA and he should ask them.  Its our job to monitor coho in the river and although its not the way I wanted to find a coho, it was a 100% positive sighting, so I forwarded the picture to our project manager with CDFG.

ID'ing Chinook, Coho and Steelhead:

Chinook:  Lower jaw is all black, including gum line (where the teeth are embedded) and tongue.

Steelhead: Lower jaw is all white including gum line and tongue.

Coho:  On the lower jaw, gum line is white or grayish/white where the teeth are embedded and it is black around that white line. The tongue is black.

THESE CHARACTERISTICS ARE 100%.  There are tons of other characteristics that people swear by, some good, some not.  Follow these rules looking at the lower jaw and you'll be fine.

I heard that DFG is going after the guy and he is in deep shit. That was one vaulable fish he caught.

Lotta info here Blue  http://groups.ucanr.org/RRCSCBP/

Biologists believe coho numbers dropped in the late 1990s to a mere 100 adult fish in the entire Russian River system, a precipitous decline caused by factors such as loss and degradation of freshwater habitat and changing ocean conditions. Surveys of prime coho streams found no returning spawners several years in a row. Throughout its entire California range, coho numbers have dropped to between 6 percent and 15 percent of their abundance during the 1940s.

There was a good run of coho's in the San Lorenzo river in the 70's when i was a kid.
I beleive that the commercial fisherman devsastrated the coho along with the runs of wild kings in the eightys when the modern electronics become common. In the ocean coho's are very easy to find as they are in the top 30' of water and where the most common salmon caught by both sport and commercial fisherman.
when the commercial salmon fisherman where restricted in the 90's the runs of kings came back in a huge way. Kings are supported by a hatchery system and are also a deep water fish, most commonly caught between 50 and 80+feet. This made it a much harder fish to catch so more wild fish survived the fishing pressure.
Cohos are supported by a hatchery system in Oregon and are common. You can not keep the kings in the ocean in oregon but only the cohos so i am told.
When a fish lives in the ocean and is on the decline or is in trouble first look to the commercial fisherman. The electronics are so advanced that they can find and catch every fish in the ocean. And the commercial fisherman have an attiude of catch everything you can before we are shut down.
Then if not the commercial fisherman look to the ocean conditions. Then look to the spawning areas. For example the Eel River's salmon and steelhead runs are being destroyed by an invasive species, the squawfish. This fish is thick in every hole in the Eel river system and is eating all the fry before they can get to the sea.

Would you be be in the same amount of trouble if you photoed the fish right before realising it?

bluekayak,
Since I've been working for the coho recovery project, 4 of the last 5 wild year classes of coho in three creeks in the Russian have gone extinct or missing.  And the last wild year class of coho was down to two fish.  Now that's all we know about.  There could be a few wild fish here and there in other creeks that we don't know about.  Maybe that's a good thing.  Our program was lucky enough to capture some of the last wild juveniles left in Russian River tributaries before these streams dried up in 2001-2003.  The hatchery is now releasing upwards of 80,000-100,000 Russian River strain juveniles in different stages every year, which is very promising.  The bad is that we just can't get all the right conditions lined up, whether its bad ocean conditions or drought conditions these last couple of years.  A lot of smolts made it out to the ocean with good conditions out there these last two years, so we should see some returns in the next two years.  Hopefully the returns will coincide with non-drought years.

One thing about working on the Russian that is rewarding is seeing and making positive changes in a watershed that has been beat to $hit.

All these coho that people have been catching in the ocean that last couple of years are most likely OR and WA fish, with I'm sure a few CA fish as well.  There was even a coho caught in Dana Point harbor in SoCal last year!  Coho and Chinook can have vastly different migrations in the ocean.

There has been a few posts on how good the ocean conditions have been since 2007.  Basically, tons of upwelling, which means tons of bait and very good conditions for salmon smolts that went out to the ocean in 07 and 08.  Also very good conditions for rockfish juveniles.