Anyone for a salmon?

Wow,

Those are humpys and a bit toward spawn.

That's a neat photo Bruce. We get a fair run of Humpies/Pinks in parts of northern Michigan. I have eaten a few caught in the rivers, but they seem to go downhill quickly compared to Kings and Coho. Pinks were the first Pacific Salmon planted (sort of accidently) in the Great Lakes. That was at least a decade before Dr. Howard Tanner started the Coho/King salmon plants in the 1960's.

Grab the fillet knife!

Uh......no thanks !

They were so thick like that everywhere along shore in Valdez two weeks ago. I used them for Halibut bait.

Grab the net.

Earlier in this thread, White17 asked for my input on red versus white kings, here's my two cents.

I've gillnetted kings on the Columbia River (Oregon/Washington), Puget Sound (Washington), Bristol Bay (Alaska), and sport caught them in southeast Alaska.

No white kings in the Columbia, but their flesh is orange, not red. These were fall fish, not spring, not sure about spring.
No white kings in Bristol Bay, all red.
Mostly red kings in SE AK, but also white, and marbled kings (red and white blended in the same fish).
Both red and white in Puget Sound, most of the whites seem to be fish bound for the Fraser River (B.C.).
I'm unsure whether it's genetics, or what they eat.

Let me make the arguement for the diet theory:
Immature winter kings (blackmouth/feeders) caught on Puget sound are very often, if not mostly white, and they smell very fishy when they come over the gillnet roller. I knew a blind guy who could tell when a blackmouth came on the boat due to the smell. I think these fish have been feeding on herring rather than crustaceans. Maybe a diet heavy in herring rather than krill, crab and shrimp larve cause them to be white. Sockeye feed exclusively on crustacean larve, krill, and phytoplankton and are the reddest of the salmon.

We have a private lake that we stock with hatchery rainbow trout. When we stock them their flesh is white. After a year in the lake, after eating crawdads and fresh water shrimp, their flesh is red.

Those are my observations anyway; over the past 50 years.

What happened to the first two pages of this thread?

The forum is seriously messed up. Lots of missing posts.....even PMs.....

So it's both genetics and diet.

Let me explain;
The compound in crustaceans that causes the meat in salmonoids to be red is called astaxanthin.
If any species of salmon or rainbow trout does not eat an organisim that contains astaxantin, the meat won't be red.

This explains white meat hatchery raise trout that from the hatchery have white meat that then turns red after eating crustaceans, or the immature winter kings that have a diet heavy in herring/candle fish, etc.

The writer of the article goes off base a little when he say the common, but false deit theory, is that, since iodine is red, and crustaceans have iodine, then that is waht causes red meat. I have never heard this explanation. The writer needs to just stick with what the scientists say, which is:

"White kings, however, lack the gene required to metabolize pigments from their foods into their muscles leaving the flesh neutrally white.
It?s not what they eat that determines the color of a salmon?s fillet, it?s if they can metabolize the pigments into muscle coloration and that ability is determined by pure genetics." (but it is what they eat that causes coloration; astaxanthin}.

However, if the fish is not eating organisms that contain the pigments that cause the coloration, that fish won't be red; whether is has the gene or not.

This question/situation is sort of like an LSAT question. All salmon that lack the gene to metabolize astaxanthin will always be white meated, but not all salmon that have the gene to be red meated, will necessarily always have red meat.

^^^^^^ Those humpys are probably white humpys now. Not in a good way