Matt, Remember that the 2003 floods were probably the most dramatic the region has seen in a good while, yet the 2005 class was relatively productive (at least by your reports). The state guys arent very good at forcasting, but their forcasts are based on juvenile numbers in the nearshore (at least thats the impression I had) which would mean that the 2005 spawners were actually relatively successful. Also, the numbers appear to be going up at Seiku and out on the straight so I dont think we've seen the end of it. Will
Good questions. Sorry for the confusion. The only reason I differentated between a Pink and Humpy in my report is one of our fish had a very pronounced hump on it's back whereas the others were more slender/streamlined in shape but also Pinks/Humpies. I should have just said fishing was great off of West Point and it doesn't appear that the Pink run is over just yet in the Central Sound. Good luck.
Not to get of topic, but as a new guy to this state, is this correct slang to describe the fishies? Chinook=Kings(when in the salt) Juvinile Kings=Jacks/Blackmouth Boots when they turned colors in the river Coho=Silvers Juvinlie=Jacks/white mouth Pinks=Pinks in the salt Humpies=in the River Chum=In the Salt dogfood=In the river ???????????So Confusing!!!!!:beathead:
any dark salmon\steelhead is a boot. any non sexually mature male (usually) salmon\steelhead that returns to the river is a jack. pink vs humpy, silver vs coho, chinook vs king.... around here it is mainly just preference. You can interchange the names and most people know what you mean. Has little to do with fresh vs salt.
Buddy and his friend hit 70-80 fish off Bush Pt last night with buzz bombs. I dont think the run is over quite yet.:thumb:
Actually, jack salmon are sexually mature male salmon, often shockingly so for their size. But, they return to their natal rivers a year or more before normal and therefore at a smaller size. They use an alternative mating strategy of hanging around pair of larger salmon and rushing in with a cloud of sperm when the pair are in the act of spawning. They hope that by volume alone they can fertilize some of the eggs of large females who would normally ignore them. Parenthetically, in some Atlantic salmon popululations in Canada, male parr can become sexually active with over half their body weight as testes. They also use the same type of sneaking / streaking strategy. Both the jack and mature parr stategies are successful if there aren't that many full size males around to push them out of the prime spawning habitat. Steve
Hey all, Thanks for the edification, my inferior Oregon upbringing had left me stupefied as to the correct Puget Sound terminology. BTW ran into pods of pinks yesterday down low on a north sound S river just after high tide. They are still coming!
