Salmon Sockeye
name: Salmon Sockeye
other names: Red Salmon, Blueback Salmon, Kokanee, Koke, Red Fish and Silver Trout
The head is bluntly pointed and conical with a pointed snout and small teeth on the jaws. Sockeye is about 24 inches long when it returns to freshwater. Breeding males have a more compressed head and body with a prolonged, hooked, turned up snout and a small hump before the dorsal fin. Breeding males and females experience a striking color change. Typical coloring of this species is brilliant steel-blue to green-blue with no distinct spots and sides overall bright silver with a white to silver belly.
Pink salmon are native to Pacific and Arctic coastal waters from the Sacramento River in northern California northeast to the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territory, Canada , and from the Lena River in Siberia to eastern Korea . They occur throughout the Aleutian Islands, the Bering and Okhotsk Seas, the Sea of Japan, and the island of Hokkaido, Japan, as well in the rivers that flow into these waters.
Primarily plankton feeders, pink salmon may feed on insects while in freshwater, though they often do not feed at all. While at sea they feed on plankton, crustaceans, small fish, and squid. They do not feed during the spawning run.
Five to 12 pounds at maturity, sockeye are the bright red fish starring in countless documentaries of crystal green rivers brimming with fish. Typically four years old, sockeye often travel long distances to reach the spawning grounds. The most important of these are found in the Fraser, Nass and Skeena Rivers, as well as in the rivers of Rivers and Smith Inlets. A female sockeye lays 2,000 - 5,000 eggs in a shallow red. Fertilized by a single male, her eggs mature in the pebbly gravel, hatching in two months as yolk-heavy alevins. Alevins emerge from the river bed and migrate to lakes in early spring. Here they reside in fresh water for the longest duration of all the salmonids - for one to two years, and in rare strains, for as long as three years - before migrating to the ocean. Upon entering the sea, smolt's migrate directly offshore where they mature over a vast area of the north Pacific Ocean. Accordingly, fishers only catch sockeye as migratory adult fish in the months of July to early September. Although some sockeye return to their river of origin as 3 or 5 year old fish, the majority breed true, that is, they return with the brood stock with which they hatched 4 years earlier. The pink salmon has an average weight of 3 to 6 pounds and length of 20 to 25 inches, though it may reach 15 pounds and 30 inches. The all-tackle world record is a 13-pound 1-ounce Great Lakes fish taken from Ontario , Canada . It lives for only 2 years.
In the past, sockeye were not caught by sports fishers. Fortunately for anglers, 15 years ago sockeye behavior altered and they began hitting red Krippled Ks trolled dead slow behind a small Gibbs flasher. In the intervening years, they have begun to take other lures: pink or orange hootchies, squirts and plankton squirts on 24 - 34 inch leaders behind a flasher. Occasionally, they will take bait in a red teaser head, and green or black apex lures. I anticipate many lures will develop over the years. Simply a piece of pink surgical tubing on a hook.
