On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:34:50 -0400, daytripper
wrote:

On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:11:44 -0700, rw
wrote:

daytripper wrote:
On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:09:02 -0500, Ken Fortenberry
wrote:


daytripper wrote:

I'm baaaaaaack. And holy crap this group has gone plumb crazy without me! ;-)
snip

Yeah, we miss your steady demeanor and calming influence. You're
like a virtual cigarette soothing roff's nerves. ;-)


Thanks. I knew you'd miss me most ;-)


Damn, that is one ugly, friggin' fish. It looks like it's on it's
last legs and about to expire right in front of the camera. Do
those things live to spawn another day or is that a dead fish
swimming ?


That's actually a fairly fresh king on this river. When they first hit the
estuary they're already colored pretty dark. Beat fish have a mottled
appearance - lots of random light yellowish-tan patches that stick out like
the dickens, and their fins show degrees of damage from struggling upstream.

As could be seen, this one had none of those signs - it's in virtually perfect
condition. And judging by how quickly he took off when released, he had plenty
of gas left...

I'd say it was around midway between fresh and spawned out. A fresh king
has a silvery color, an active spawner is bright red, and, like you say,
a spawned-out one is patchy.

Nice fish.

When I fished for Kings running in the Hood's Canal they were often red, but
I've fished the Salmon River for four runs now, and have never, ever seen a
red salmon...

/daytripper

fwiw

The only fish I've seen during the run that could be called "silver" were the
occasional chromer steelhead like this one from last season

http://home.comcast.net/~day_trippr/...teelie_hen.jpg

and some early-run Chinook salmon - which I've caught on rare occasions, but
which we saw nary a one this trip.

I didn't see any Kings landed that were any lighter than that big dude, most
were as dark or darker, or that beat-up mix of colors. Also, we spent about a
half-hour during lunchtime our first day standing on a highway bridge that
spans the estuary and observed pods of large salmon entering the river mouth,
and as best as I could tell they were all the same dark tone as the one in the
picture.

So, while I could be wrong, I'm pretty sure the Kings start their run already
quite colored...

/daytripper