Posted on 11/05/2008 10:10:58 PM PST by fishhound
Let's just say I wouldn't. Salmon start to die when they hit fresh water. By the time they reach spawning grounds, in this case about 200 miles up the Sacramento River, past Lake Shasta, they are pretty well done for. If it ain't floppin' and fightin' and looking healthy when I land it, it's going back.
Most of the time it is better to get a small fish to eat.
More tender and tastier.
I once caught an 8 pound lobster and fed its tail to my father in law. I ate a three pounder and I guarantee ya mine was much tastier and much more tender BUT the sheer size knocked my father in laws socks off.
LOL.
Well, I am pretty sure that I would have a hard time getting passed the smell of a fish that had just spawned. :)
Is this the one that “Got Away” Dave?
It looks smoked. lol
And a barrel of cream cheese. LOL!
That must have been great.
I spent Monday and Tuesday steelhead fishing on the Trinity.
Monday, in a drift boat, I had a 10# tippet snapped in the middle, not a knot problem as the guide did the tying. Then the all day monsoon put the fish down for the rest of the day except for Steelie half pounders.
Tuesday, I caught and released probably a 10# Steelhead and had another snapoff later on. The last fish was huge and a Steelhead not a salmon.
All of the Steelhead caught were native not hatchery fish. All of the fish caught from the 3 boats were caught on beads imitating salmon eggs instead of the usual smaller bug/nymphs which used to catch the steelies on the Trinity
The spawning salmon for the most part were smaller than the Steelhead we caught.
Kudos to the hard working young Miwok tribal members for marking the salmon reds, doing on the river surveys and monitoring. The ones I saw and talked were bright young men and dedicated to bringing the Trinity back to what it was like with their ancestors.
A heck of a lot greater than living 3 miles from a now stagnant mud puddle that was a nice trout fishing & swimming reservoir before 7 or 8 (depends on which agency’s statistics are correct) years of drought ruined it.
On the up side, were drowning in wild turkeys, and most of the does have been twinning, with even some triplets born, so plenty of game.
It was (probably still is) the same in Oregon.
Dirty little secret got out there several years ago:
The hatchery was only fin-clipping a certain set percentage of the fish, thus creating "wild" fish as far as catching them was concerned, even though they were in reality hatchery raised.
Don’t know about Oregon but in CA the people they hire to snip fins are pretty much minimum wage workers and ofter druggies or people of questionable immigration status (both quite abundant in rural Northern CA). Not highly motivated folks.
There aren’t a lot of jobs in Siskiyou County and my nephew’s wife had the job for a couple of weeks a few years back. She said they clipped about one fish in two on a good day. That was Klamath steelhead.
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