coho (or silver) salmon

  from : California Department of Fish and Wildlife

CDFW reminds recreational anglers to be vigilant about species identification when pursuing Chinook salmon in California’s ocean fisheries.
 
The harvest of coho (or silver) salmon is strictly prohibited to protect the state’s threatened or endangered coho salmon stocks. Coho salmon can be distinguished from Chinook salmon by the coloration of the gums on the lower jaw—the gums at the base of the bottom teeth on a coho salmon are gray, whereas Chinook salmon gums are all black.

 Learn more about salmon identification and tips for coho avoidance in the latest Marine Management News Blog: https://cdfwmarine.wordpress.com/.../watch-out-for-coho.../

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My favorite Salmon ID article. Just shared this w a buddy so thought I would post it here.

https://myodfw.com/articles/it-coho-or-chinook

Learned the cool trick about the smooth tails on kings and ridged tails on silvers from this. But hopefully you get good look at their mouths, or those big puzzle piece spots on the kings back. I used to judge them by the color of the sheen off their back in the water, like dark purple for kings and greener for silvers, but that isn't always the case and I've been wrong before using that. It sucks to see a silver shake its scales and just bob in the water column when you have to release it, they swim off happily if they never touch the net.

Last year during free fishing weekend around the 4th in Eureka, the CDFW agent gave away like 60 tickets for silvers! Thats gotta hurt..