chinook versus coho

Nice pics AB. I've run across a few river beds w/ spawning chinook/coho/pinks/chum and it's an impressive experience. Not sure why but I guess when you see them at the end of their journey you can't help but feel some serious respect. Thanks for sharing.

Z

Last winter, right in the middle of Salinas. A lost or truly endangered species. What is it? Pretty easy

What is it?

According to the name of the file, it is a SALINAS STEELHEAD 2009 007.JPG. 

Michael

Cool pic Calbear. Kinda sad too. Hopefully that one made it up to Arroyo Seco to complete its mission for nookie. I’ve got a pic of a 39” steelhead carcass that I found along the Salinas 2 winters ago…talk about survival of the fittest! I’m always interested in hearing about the south central coast steelhead.
Here’s some pics of a mystery salmonid that I observed in a local crik the 1st wknd of Dec (hints: there had been zero rain in the previous months and the fish was approx 15lbs).
PK





EDIT: Why can I only post thumbnails from our gallery? How do I post full-size images?

Sincoast,
its either a Chinook or coho, it is not a steelhead, what watershed is it from.  A guess would be Chinook not knowing the watershed.

Chinook

After catching a few, it becomes second nature, and you don't even need to look at the gumline or tail.  Quick test ... what is this?

-Allen

Sure looks like the fish I was catching last week - so I'll say "Silver", and not a  bad sized one at that.

I'll go on to read the rest of the posts, but just wanted to add that the "green" tint thing is not always there, especially in fresh water. Sometimes the fish appeared to have a grey back, sometimes a bronze-ish back, and sometimes that really cool neon-green back. We did have one intense moment when another angler in our group kept a Silver that had slightly pinkish sides, and from a distance of 50 feet sort of said "Steelhead". Illegal to keep where we were.

I'm not sure if we saw any Kings, as the only fish large enough were very washed out, and were stationed across the river in a hole. We definitely saw dogs and reds and gazillions of humpies, to go along with the silvers. While not as many humpies as there were last year (thank goodness) there were some real bruisers this year, some going 8-10 lbs.

Scott

P.S. Since someone mentioned a lack of spots on the backs of Silvers, I'll add that the "Silverhead" also had plenty of spots on the back, which also added to the "Oh no" factor when we first saw it at 50 feet. There were no spots on the lower half of the tail, and there were 14 anal rays. Dissection also revealed typical Salmon colored flesh