Post by ShadowCaster on Jul 25, 2013 22:25:15 GMT 8
King Of the Pacific : Chinook Salmon of the Skeena River, Canada
The word “salmon” is practically synonymous with game fish. The manifold virtues of the Atlantic salmon established this, but his Pacific cousins do a lot more for Anglers. What is more, they are in many ways the most spectacular natural resource available to mankind and a major item of the world's food supply. One need not be an angler to be very much interested in them, but anglers, and especially fly fishers, have many special reasons for interest, and most men who have fished on the Pacific coast of the American continent have a healthy curiosity about the salmon runs.
Pacific salmon are confusing chiefly because so very much confusing stuff has been written about them. There is confusion, to start with, about their relationship to Atlantic salmon. They are related but that is about all. They differ widely from the Atlantic salmon in both habits and physical characteristics, and for this sufficient reason they are classed by fish biologists as a separate genus : Oncorhynchus instead of Salmo.
The next confusion comes from the several species of Pacific Salmon. There are 5 completely different species, and each species is physically different from the others, different in life history, different in feeding and other habits. All 5 species are commercially important; at least 2 are coveted by fly fishers.
As though 5 species were not enough, there is further confusion that each species has several common names : The Chinook salmon is called that name in Canada, become the King Salmon as one crosses the US border to the south into the Puget Sound. This very same species is also called the Spring Salmon or Tyee if it exceeds 40 pounds in Canada's British Columbia, but if you travel North into Alaska, it is called the King Salmon again. These are local names but they are the only names that ordinary people know and use, and the locality where each has its meaning is no little town but an area measured in tens of thousands of square miles.
The Chinook has a right to the title “King” or “Tyee”, because he is by far the largest of salmon in the world, commonly weighing between 30 to 50 pounds at maturity and occasionally more than a hundred pounds. Just why British Columbians in Canada call him “Spring Salmon”, I am not sure, but probably because many rivers have quite distinct runs of Chinook, one in the Spring, which is earlier than all other salmon runs, and the other in late summer or fall. It is the famed Skeena River of British Columbia in Canada and the Kenai River in Alaska, which consistently produces the largest Chinook Salmon in the world year after year. The size and ferocity of these two rivers demanded Chinook salmon with the biggest, strongest and fittest gene pool to be able to make it to the spawning ground.
For a sportsman who desire to target trophy size Chinook on rods and reels, one has to travel to the either the Skeena River in British Columbia, Canada or the Kenai River in Alaska, United States. But if one wants a fair chance to hook and land one on a fly rod while wading, perhaps the more secluded Skeena is the only option as the Kenai is mainly dominated by fishermen on power boats using heavy spinning and casting gear. The Skeena originates south of the Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Provincial Park in north western British Columbia. It flows for 570km before it empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Skeena drains 54,400 sq km of land that is inhibited by less than 15,000 people. As a comparison, Singapore main island has an area of about 700 sq km sustaining more than 5 million people. The river was named the “Skeena” by the local American Indians thousands of years ago, meaning “Misty River” in their local indigenous language. It certainly lives up to its reputation.
The Skeena traces its source from the Sacred Headwaters, a name given to a subalpine basin in northern British Columbia that is the source of three wild salmon rivers: the Skeena River, Nass River and Stikine River. Salmon swim over 400 kilometres from the Pacific Ocean to spawn in the upper reaches of the Skeena and its 3 main tributaries; the Kitimat, the Kalum and the Copper. Access to the Skeena is via the small fishing and logging town of Terrace, which is about 1 hour 45 minutes flight North of Vancouver city via regional turbo-prop aircraft. If you fly into Terrace during the Salmon run in July and August, chances are that more than half the passengers would be wearing some form of vented fishing shirt and carrying fly rod tubes. On my flight into Terrace, the pilot's announcement upon landing goes something like this : “Welcome to Terrace ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain again and according to Terrace Control Tower, the Chinook run started 6 days ago, and the largest landed so far was 55 pounds as of this morning! Air Canada wishes you a good week of fishing”. There was no mistake that I had landed in the right town!
I was using a 13ft 6inch spey rod, casting 720grain Skagit lines and 10-15ft of heavy tungsten sink tips. This is probably as heavy as it can get for double handed fly rods. The heavy Skagit head fly line looks as thick as telephone cables, which was essential to cast the 10-15ft of T14 sink tips. The technique was to first read the waters and locate the lane which the Chinook would typically migrate upstream, and “swing” a fly across such lane. This was typically a seam in the current caused by under-water structures or a bend in the river. Hopefully, the appearance of the fly in front of the passing Chinook will trigger its predator instinct and cause it to strike.
The fast and deep Skeena demands such set-up to get the fly down to the depth that the Chinook dwells, and the long and stout rod is a minimum to give you a fighting chance to subdue 30 to 50 pounds of Chinook with the swimming power of mini nuclear submarine. A typical strike by a chinook feels like a hit from a freight train! There is no mistake of what's on the other end of the line. This is usually followed by a long run well into the backing. One will need to walk or run after the fish along the bank to prevent the inevitible fate of running out of backing!
We caught fish early on, strong fish not long out of the ocean. It was a trill to catch these big and hard fish. But it was less about capture, less even about releasing fish. You begin as a Predator, but end as a stake holder.
Hooking and landing such a strong fish naturally present its challenges. The Chinook is clever enough to use the fast river current to its advantage when hooked. If a “small” 30 pound fish decides to run downstream, there wasn't much anything anyone with a fly rod can do, notwithstanding the 25-30 pound test tippet we were using. On average, fly fisherman using a single barbless hook (mandated by law) would land about 1 in every 3 hooked. The principal is that the longer the fight lasts, the higher chance that the barbless hook will pull out. In the 5 days I spent on the Skeena system, I managed to get 11 to eat my fly, but only managed to land four. So the 1 in 3 statistics is in the correct ballpark.
So, we now move on to the biggest fish of the trip. My guide positioned me to a section of the river call the “Lasanga Run”. Why is it called that? I do not know. It is one of those complex runs with multiple current lines crossing each other, causing any fly fishermen to stare at it for a long time trying to understand the drift. There seem to be a fulcrum among all those current lines, that caused the swinging fly to linger momentarily. On one of my cast, the fly stopped more emphatically than what a normal swing would. It then moved deliberately to the middle of the pool and stopped with such conviction that after a long moment, I asked my guide if I still had the fish because it felt more and more that I had hooked the bottom. Just then, the Chinook erupted into a massive run down river, taking more than 200m of backing, and I began to chase after it, through boulders, down a game trail, around a tree, onto the next gravel bar.
I was a little breathless after two to three hundred meters downstream, pumping the stout rod, gaining a bit of line, and loosing more at the same time. After another fifty meters, the Chinook stopped and we had a more conventional fight. Because this was such an exceptional fish, the likelihood of loosing it seems dreadful, and I actually prepared myself for the worst. I wanted to be able to accept the loss and not feel sick should I be defeated.
Twice the fish came almost to the guide's net but bolted in the last moment. My guide tried to get under it but ended up sliding into the river to his waist. On the 3rd try he had the gigantic fish in the net, almost 25 minutes after I hooked it a few hundred meters upstream. I was simply overwhelmed. My heart was pumping and a steady stream of prespiration ran down my back despite the frigid water : a big beautiful Chinook hen, so recently in the Pacific Ocean.
I tried lifting it with my arms for a quick photo but it was too heavy. Based on its girth and length, the Chinook was estimated to be between 45 to 50 pounds. I only managed to cradle it in my arms momentarily for a photo.
I sat on the edge of the river, the fish submerged and close at hand. The Chinook, like me, was gasping for oxygen. Both of us seem to be recovering at the same speed. I touched the slightly frayed dorsal; and then the big pectorals, which were unexpectedly rigid, like fins on an aircraft. The salmon made no effort to escape, just steadily faced into the current. I held the fish by the thick waist of its tail and revived it in deeper water. After a while, the Chinook began to kick, and with real strength, it rushes into the current, leaving me drenched with a shower of water from its powerful tail.
There were certainly many more Chinook that I hooked but could not land, including all those that I connected with my single handed 9ft 12 weight rod. The most memorable was one where I had connected with a big fish for close to 40 minutes. I brought it close to the net 3 times, and each time, applying as much pressure as I dare on the 25lb tippet, and when the guide was within a meter of netting it, the fish bolted downstream with the fly line and more than 100+ meters of backing. The short 9ft rod simply did not have the leverage to control a big powerful fish at bank-side. The fish was estimated to be about 60 pounds. In the end, the inevitable happened. Reeling back 200m of backing plus the fly line took forever.
Because of his size, the Chinook is probably the best known of all Pacific salmon. But the Coho, or Silver salmon deserves equally well of anglers because he is a great fighter, a jumping fool who readily takes a fly in salt or fresh water. Coho are much smaller than Chinooks, averaging about eight to twelve pounds, but on the mighty Skeena river, Coho up to 30 pounds had been landed by fly fishermen. (See following link on fly fishing for Coho on the Pitt River : www.fishingkaki.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=229531 )
The Sockeye salmon is definitely a fish of the Fraser River near Vancouver Canada. The sockeye is also commonly called the Red Salmon from the bright-red color of its flesh. It is also probably the best tasting among all Pacific salmon. The Skeena river system also supports a healthy run of Sockeye every year.
The Humpback salmon is a little fish, averaging about four pounds on most Pacific Coast rivers. It is also widely known as Pink salmon, but most fishermen still use the affectionate “Humpie” which seems to fit better and mean more than pink. The Humpie takes flies readily and they averages about 6-8 pounds on the Skeena. While my attempt with a 9ft 12wt single handed rod on the Chinook ended up with a 0 to 4 score, the 9ft 9wt had plenty of success with the Humpies.
The Dog salmon got its namesake from the native American Indians. The Dog salmon's flesh is allegedly of the poorest eating quality among all 5 species of Pacific Salmon, and the American Indians would only feed it to their dogs, hence the name stuck. Commercially, the Dog salmon are commonly marketed as Chum salmon, most likely attributed to the fact that it will be difficult for fly fishing company to sell a costly trip to a fly fisherman to catch Dog salmon or for the food processing industry to sell a can of Dog salmon for sandwiches. But Dog or Chum, they are fine fishes to catch on a fly rod.
I think that the Pacific salmon runs are probably the most spectacular natural resource on the face of Earth. The salmon population is less than it once was, but even today this annual movement of millions upon millions of great gleaming fish through the length and breadth of the American continental shelf toward their spawning in the high tributaries is a tremendous thing. The salmon runs, more surely and easily than almost any other resource, can be made to last and serve indefinitely, can even be grown back to their full glory a century ago. The base of the resource is the sea, which gives life to myriads of planktons, so long as there are shrimps to feed on the planktons, so long as there are herrings to feed on the shrimps, so long as there are salmon to feed on the herrings, and so turn the planktons at last to man's use, the ocean base of resource is solid. And there will be salmon and more salmon to complete this cycle so long as they are allowed to enter the rivers to their spawning in sufficient numbers, so long as the way to the spawning bed is kept clear and open and so long as the rivers are kept clean and fresh and pure. It is as simple as that.
The word “salmon” is practically synonymous with game fish. The manifold virtues of the Atlantic salmon established this, but his Pacific cousins do a lot more for Anglers. What is more, they are in many ways the most spectacular natural resource available to mankind and a major item of the world's food supply. One need not be an angler to be very much interested in them, but anglers, and especially fly fishers, have many special reasons for interest, and most men who have fished on the Pacific coast of the American continent have a healthy curiosity about the salmon runs.
Pacific salmon are confusing chiefly because so very much confusing stuff has been written about them. There is confusion, to start with, about their relationship to Atlantic salmon. They are related but that is about all. They differ widely from the Atlantic salmon in both habits and physical characteristics, and for this sufficient reason they are classed by fish biologists as a separate genus : Oncorhynchus instead of Salmo.
The next confusion comes from the several species of Pacific Salmon. There are 5 completely different species, and each species is physically different from the others, different in life history, different in feeding and other habits. All 5 species are commercially important; at least 2 are coveted by fly fishers.
As though 5 species were not enough, there is further confusion that each species has several common names : The Chinook salmon is called that name in Canada, become the King Salmon as one crosses the US border to the south into the Puget Sound. This very same species is also called the Spring Salmon or Tyee if it exceeds 40 pounds in Canada's British Columbia, but if you travel North into Alaska, it is called the King Salmon again. These are local names but they are the only names that ordinary people know and use, and the locality where each has its meaning is no little town but an area measured in tens of thousands of square miles.
The Chinook has a right to the title “King” or “Tyee”, because he is by far the largest of salmon in the world, commonly weighing between 30 to 50 pounds at maturity and occasionally more than a hundred pounds. Just why British Columbians in Canada call him “Spring Salmon”, I am not sure, but probably because many rivers have quite distinct runs of Chinook, one in the Spring, which is earlier than all other salmon runs, and the other in late summer or fall. It is the famed Skeena River of British Columbia in Canada and the Kenai River in Alaska, which consistently produces the largest Chinook Salmon in the world year after year. The size and ferocity of these two rivers demanded Chinook salmon with the biggest, strongest and fittest gene pool to be able to make it to the spawning ground.
For a sportsman who desire to target trophy size Chinook on rods and reels, one has to travel to the either the Skeena River in British Columbia, Canada or the Kenai River in Alaska, United States. But if one wants a fair chance to hook and land one on a fly rod while wading, perhaps the more secluded Skeena is the only option as the Kenai is mainly dominated by fishermen on power boats using heavy spinning and casting gear. The Skeena originates south of the Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Provincial Park in north western British Columbia. It flows for 570km before it empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Skeena drains 54,400 sq km of land that is inhibited by less than 15,000 people. As a comparison, Singapore main island has an area of about 700 sq km sustaining more than 5 million people. The river was named the “Skeena” by the local American Indians thousands of years ago, meaning “Misty River” in their local indigenous language. It certainly lives up to its reputation.
The Skeena traces its source from the Sacred Headwaters, a name given to a subalpine basin in northern British Columbia that is the source of three wild salmon rivers: the Skeena River, Nass River and Stikine River. Salmon swim over 400 kilometres from the Pacific Ocean to spawn in the upper reaches of the Skeena and its 3 main tributaries; the Kitimat, the Kalum and the Copper. Access to the Skeena is via the small fishing and logging town of Terrace, which is about 1 hour 45 minutes flight North of Vancouver city via regional turbo-prop aircraft. If you fly into Terrace during the Salmon run in July and August, chances are that more than half the passengers would be wearing some form of vented fishing shirt and carrying fly rod tubes. On my flight into Terrace, the pilot's announcement upon landing goes something like this : “Welcome to Terrace ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain again and according to Terrace Control Tower, the Chinook run started 6 days ago, and the largest landed so far was 55 pounds as of this morning! Air Canada wishes you a good week of fishing”. There was no mistake that I had landed in the right town!
I was using a 13ft 6inch spey rod, casting 720grain Skagit lines and 10-15ft of heavy tungsten sink tips. This is probably as heavy as it can get for double handed fly rods. The heavy Skagit head fly line looks as thick as telephone cables, which was essential to cast the 10-15ft of T14 sink tips. The technique was to first read the waters and locate the lane which the Chinook would typically migrate upstream, and “swing” a fly across such lane. This was typically a seam in the current caused by under-water structures or a bend in the river. Hopefully, the appearance of the fly in front of the passing Chinook will trigger its predator instinct and cause it to strike.
The fast and deep Skeena demands such set-up to get the fly down to the depth that the Chinook dwells, and the long and stout rod is a minimum to give you a fighting chance to subdue 30 to 50 pounds of Chinook with the swimming power of mini nuclear submarine. A typical strike by a chinook feels like a hit from a freight train! There is no mistake of what's on the other end of the line. This is usually followed by a long run well into the backing. One will need to walk or run after the fish along the bank to prevent the inevitible fate of running out of backing!
We caught fish early on, strong fish not long out of the ocean. It was a trill to catch these big and hard fish. But it was less about capture, less even about releasing fish. You begin as a Predator, but end as a stake holder.
Hooking and landing such a strong fish naturally present its challenges. The Chinook is clever enough to use the fast river current to its advantage when hooked. If a “small” 30 pound fish decides to run downstream, there wasn't much anything anyone with a fly rod can do, notwithstanding the 25-30 pound test tippet we were using. On average, fly fisherman using a single barbless hook (mandated by law) would land about 1 in every 3 hooked. The principal is that the longer the fight lasts, the higher chance that the barbless hook will pull out. In the 5 days I spent on the Skeena system, I managed to get 11 to eat my fly, but only managed to land four. So the 1 in 3 statistics is in the correct ballpark.
So, we now move on to the biggest fish of the trip. My guide positioned me to a section of the river call the “Lasanga Run”. Why is it called that? I do not know. It is one of those complex runs with multiple current lines crossing each other, causing any fly fishermen to stare at it for a long time trying to understand the drift. There seem to be a fulcrum among all those current lines, that caused the swinging fly to linger momentarily. On one of my cast, the fly stopped more emphatically than what a normal swing would. It then moved deliberately to the middle of the pool and stopped with such conviction that after a long moment, I asked my guide if I still had the fish because it felt more and more that I had hooked the bottom. Just then, the Chinook erupted into a massive run down river, taking more than 200m of backing, and I began to chase after it, through boulders, down a game trail, around a tree, onto the next gravel bar.
I was a little breathless after two to three hundred meters downstream, pumping the stout rod, gaining a bit of line, and loosing more at the same time. After another fifty meters, the Chinook stopped and we had a more conventional fight. Because this was such an exceptional fish, the likelihood of loosing it seems dreadful, and I actually prepared myself for the worst. I wanted to be able to accept the loss and not feel sick should I be defeated.
Twice the fish came almost to the guide's net but bolted in the last moment. My guide tried to get under it but ended up sliding into the river to his waist. On the 3rd try he had the gigantic fish in the net, almost 25 minutes after I hooked it a few hundred meters upstream. I was simply overwhelmed. My heart was pumping and a steady stream of prespiration ran down my back despite the frigid water : a big beautiful Chinook hen, so recently in the Pacific Ocean.
I tried lifting it with my arms for a quick photo but it was too heavy. Based on its girth and length, the Chinook was estimated to be between 45 to 50 pounds. I only managed to cradle it in my arms momentarily for a photo.
I sat on the edge of the river, the fish submerged and close at hand. The Chinook, like me, was gasping for oxygen. Both of us seem to be recovering at the same speed. I touched the slightly frayed dorsal; and then the big pectorals, which were unexpectedly rigid, like fins on an aircraft. The salmon made no effort to escape, just steadily faced into the current. I held the fish by the thick waist of its tail and revived it in deeper water. After a while, the Chinook began to kick, and with real strength, it rushes into the current, leaving me drenched with a shower of water from its powerful tail.
There were certainly many more Chinook that I hooked but could not land, including all those that I connected with my single handed 9ft 12 weight rod. The most memorable was one where I had connected with a big fish for close to 40 minutes. I brought it close to the net 3 times, and each time, applying as much pressure as I dare on the 25lb tippet, and when the guide was within a meter of netting it, the fish bolted downstream with the fly line and more than 100+ meters of backing. The short 9ft rod simply did not have the leverage to control a big powerful fish at bank-side. The fish was estimated to be about 60 pounds. In the end, the inevitable happened. Reeling back 200m of backing plus the fly line took forever.
Because of his size, the Chinook is probably the best known of all Pacific salmon. But the Coho, or Silver salmon deserves equally well of anglers because he is a great fighter, a jumping fool who readily takes a fly in salt or fresh water. Coho are much smaller than Chinooks, averaging about eight to twelve pounds, but on the mighty Skeena river, Coho up to 30 pounds had been landed by fly fishermen. (See following link on fly fishing for Coho on the Pitt River : www.fishingkaki.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=229531 )
The Sockeye salmon is definitely a fish of the Fraser River near Vancouver Canada. The sockeye is also commonly called the Red Salmon from the bright-red color of its flesh. It is also probably the best tasting among all Pacific salmon. The Skeena river system also supports a healthy run of Sockeye every year.
The Humpback salmon is a little fish, averaging about four pounds on most Pacific Coast rivers. It is also widely known as Pink salmon, but most fishermen still use the affectionate “Humpie” which seems to fit better and mean more than pink. The Humpie takes flies readily and they averages about 6-8 pounds on the Skeena. While my attempt with a 9ft 12wt single handed rod on the Chinook ended up with a 0 to 4 score, the 9ft 9wt had plenty of success with the Humpies.
The Dog salmon got its namesake from the native American Indians. The Dog salmon's flesh is allegedly of the poorest eating quality among all 5 species of Pacific Salmon, and the American Indians would only feed it to their dogs, hence the name stuck. Commercially, the Dog salmon are commonly marketed as Chum salmon, most likely attributed to the fact that it will be difficult for fly fishing company to sell a costly trip to a fly fisherman to catch Dog salmon or for the food processing industry to sell a can of Dog salmon for sandwiches. But Dog or Chum, they are fine fishes to catch on a fly rod.
I think that the Pacific salmon runs are probably the most spectacular natural resource on the face of Earth. The salmon population is less than it once was, but even today this annual movement of millions upon millions of great gleaming fish through the length and breadth of the American continental shelf toward their spawning in the high tributaries is a tremendous thing. The salmon runs, more surely and easily than almost any other resource, can be made to last and serve indefinitely, can even be grown back to their full glory a century ago. The base of the resource is the sea, which gives life to myriads of planktons, so long as there are shrimps to feed on the planktons, so long as there are herrings to feed on the shrimps, so long as there are salmon to feed on the herrings, and so turn the planktons at last to man's use, the ocean base of resource is solid. And there will be salmon and more salmon to complete this cycle so long as they are allowed to enter the rivers to their spawning in sufficient numbers, so long as the way to the spawning bed is kept clear and open and so long as the rivers are kept clean and fresh and pure. It is as simple as that.
