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Landlocked chinook! (pics)

5K views 18 replies 12 participants last post by  corkyking 
#1 ·
Some of you may have missed my post last February about the chinooks being planted in nearby Folsom Lake. They go into the lake at 4 to 7 inches.

It seems these fellas are getting big. I fished this morning and caught the biggest landlocked chinook so far (for me anyhow).

The landlocked salmon do not get the chance to grow big like their oceangoing counterparts, but after this morning, I dont mind! Check these pics! This guy weighed in at 4lbs 9oz, and just over 21 inches.


 
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#5 ·
KHH-Here is the info on Folsom Lake. It is about 20 miles from Sacramento, on the way towards Lake Tahoe.

I have been one these Kings since February, and the techniques have changed through the year with the weather and water temp.

In February, the surface water temp was 54 degrees. We slaughtered the fish in the top 5 feet of water, literally trolling in the propwash. We knew we were the right length from the boat when we could just barely see our dodgers. Everybody was letting line out to get away from the boat, and they were catching much fewer fish. We fished at 1.4MPH with a watermelon Seps dodger, trailed by a Berkely drop shot power worm, 4 inches long and threaded onto a single Gamy hook. We lost many fish due to the hook arrangement, but we caught a bunch too.

Summer rolled around, and the surface temp rose to 74 degrees, which is where it is today. The fishing went from an all day affair to now, where we are done fishing at 0730 hours. The bite turns off totally. Our technique for the 74 degree water is downrigging to 65 to 75 deep. We have switched to a 3 inch Yo-zuri Pins minnow, gold and black behind the watermelon dodger. The 2 inchers work, but we seem to catch the big fish on the bigger Pins minnows. Our speed is up also, now at about 2 to 2.5 MPH. We are fighting to stay on the fish after 7:30 or 8:00. We drop the downriggers to 100, 125 or 150 feet. We change lures. We change speed, and location. Nothing! I think that the fish just flat stop hitting when the sun is on the water, in the summertime anyway.

As everyone knows, the state of CA is in financial ruins. I hope that they continue to stock Folsom with these fish. The salmon in Folsom come from the Mokulumne hatchery (East of Stockton) and are triploids. They are aggressive feeders, and make good table fare. They do not cook up as good as an ocean salmon, but they are tasty still.

If any of you Ifishers out there are passing through Sacramento, email me.
 
#6 ·
Originally posted by FallRiverGuy:
I wish that there were more lakes in Oregon that planted landlock chinooks.
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Lookout Point Res. has...or at least had...landlocked chinooks. ODFW has trucked adults above Hills Creek res and I think excess chinook fry were stocked...may still be. Its been 10 yrs or more since I fished for 'em...they were schooled up in deep water like kokanee and I caught several near the dam on the downrigger at 40-50 feet. They were nice looking fish running about 12"-14"....until you cut them open. Their gut cavity was full of wriggling brownish worms :shocked: :sick: ...about as much worms as guts, by volume. I called the local odfw office and the guy told me the fish were "safe to eat". Maybe so...but someone else would have to do the gutting & cleaning. I haven't been back and nobody else seems to want these fish, either.
 
#8 ·
The best place for land locked salmon in Southern Oregon would have to be Diamond Lake. ODFW has been going bonkers on how to solve the Chui Chub problem there the last 5-6 years. One of the ideas was to put Chinooks in the lake. I've heard of them getting over 5-8 pounds. I don't know if they are going to plant any more this next year though. But last year they planted over 10,000 legals there.

McBaine
 
#10 ·
Crashin'--Not much at the American yet, but we are waiting eagerly. There was one group of salmon that passed through (via the Sacramento River) a couple of weeks ago after a rain, and a few were caught. The water has to cool before we will see any good fishing.

I went to the Nimbus hatchery/fish weir yesterday to check for salmon. I saw 1 fish. For some reason, fish and game has already put the gate up. Normally they let several thousand fish pass the weir up to Nimbus Basin, not this year.
 
#13 ·
FRG - The odfw guy knew about the parasitic worms...said they were common in LookoutPt and other low elevation waters with landlocked chinook. Friends of mine went there a year or two later and also caught them like I did and the fish still had worms.
 
#14 ·
There are landlocked chinook in Detroit also. I've seen them spawning, and had a spawner take my lure once. I slacklined it so it would get off and go spawn. I've also caught a couple of chinook smolts there while trout fishing. I've been intending to target them, but my fishing time this summer was seriously curtailed by other committments, and I wasn't able to do it. Maybe next summer. I've heard they go deeper than the kokanee in Detroit, and the kokanee go very deep there.

happybrew
 
#17 ·
This article will explaine what is a triploid salmon.

New York Times
March 31, 2002
OUTDOORS
Genetic Engineering Rescues Salmon
By PETE BODO

For years, conservationists and green-minded scientists dedicated to
saving wild Atlantic salmon have sifted through predictions of juicy tomatoes the
size of beach balls and chickens consisting entirely of white meat, looking
for some shred of evidence that genetic engineering is not merely an upbeat,
artfully disguised and cheerfully publicized death sentence for wild creatures
as we know them.

They have not found much, not until the recent appearance on their
radar screens of triploid salmon. These are salmon that can be rendered
sterile, cheaply and efficiently, while they are still in the pre-embryonic,
egg stage of their development. If the sea farmers in the $600 million
commercial aquaculture industry can be persuaded to grow only triploid fish, one
of the most significant threats to the dwindling, stressed stocks of wild
salmon - the perils posed by mixing the genes of domestic and wild fish - can be
alleviated.

"This could be a win-win scenario," said Fred Whoriskey, vice
president of research and environment for the Atlantic Salmon Federation, "in that
taking the genetic, reproductive component in farm fish out of the picture in
a cost- effective way would really protect wild fish, while having just a
negligible effect on the salmon farming industry."

Triploid salmon, however, are not yet the magic bullet sought by a
conservation establishment that has been stung more than once by false hopes.

. . .


Only a few decades ago, it appeared that by accelerating the viability
and growth of fish-farming, genetic science would help lift the veil of
extinction slowly closing around wild salmon. If you could grow salmon as if they
were corn or chickens, the cost-intensive process of fishing on the high
seas for wild salmon would become economically unfeasible. Thus, conservation
groups, including the Atlantic Salmon Federation, enthusiastically supported
aquaculture. The industry, along with the science helping drive it,
flourished.

"The salmon growers keep coming back to genetic programs with `we need
this, we need that,' " Whoriskey said. "It's really just like breeding dogs.
The genetics guys even select for body shape now, trying to increase the
boxlike shape of the fish to increase the marketable flesh and the ease with
which it can be packaged."

The X-factor that nobody anticipated was that farming on the ocean
proved more problematic and far less predictable than on dry land. The chief
problem was containment: sea cages were prone to destruction by storms and
predators, like seals. As the industry exploded, so did the numbers of increasingly
specialized fish that, while neither bred nor fit for life in the wild, retained
two important attributes of their wild cousins: the urge to ascend rivers
and the ability to reproduce.

When salmon-farm escapees mate with wild salmon that have evolved to
survive the rigors of nature (rather than to serve the needs of fish growers),
the gene pool of the wild, river-specific fish is severely compromised. Their
offspring may not have the genetic tools required to survive the complex,
demanding natural life cycle. Clearly, being shaped like a cardboard box does
not help a salmon leap a falls, or escape a predator.

Enter, triploids.

. . .


Whoriskey said the process of triploidization is a relatively simple
one that can be carried out upon hundreds of thousands of eggs at one time for
a fraction of a penny a fish. The fertilized eggs are put into an
enormous, high-tech version of a pressure cooker, and subject to a shock that so
disrupts cell development that each cell in the fish will subsequently have three
rather than the natural two sets of chromosomes (the diploid condition, similar to
our own).

These triploid fish will then grow normally until, as a prelude to
reproduction, they begin to develop protosperm and egg cells. When
those cells are about to divide, automatically delegating either side of the cell
for one of either set of chromosomes, the existence of the third set confuses
the cell. "The machinery is designed to deal with two, not three sets of
chromosomes, so the works get gummed up and the whole process falls apart," Whoriskey
said. "The fish is unable to generate sperm or egg cells."

But so far, four factors, influenced by economic problems like
shrinking prices - and profits - in the aquaculture industry, have kept fish farmers
from embracing triploid salmon.

. When approaching reproduction, healthy salmon experience a growth
surge. Because they are sterile, triploids do not. In early experiments,
triploids were up to a third smaller than wild, sexually capable fish of the
same strain.

. Although triploid fish in theory contain more protein (the extra DNA
in the third chromosome), food processors have objected that the cells of
triploid fish are larger and thus have a higher water content, making them less
desirable as consumer products.

. In some strains, triploids have shown a higher than acceptable rate
of some developmental deformity, like a jaw that juts out in the wrong
direction. While strictly cosmetic, such abnormalities are anathema to fish buyers -
and consumers.

. The immune systems of triploids appear to be weaker than those of
diploid fish, wild or otherwise.

Researchers are working, with some success, on diminishing these
drawbacks. If they do, it will be a sorely needed triumph for conservationists still
waiting to see if the vision of genetic futurists is broad enough to include
the survival of salmon that are not shaped like boxes.
 
#18 ·
I've caught plenty of tri-ploid rainbows and sure they get big and fat but when ya start messin with nature your bound to get bit in the arse,All I'm saying is leave genetics out of my fish and rat DNA out of my lettice thank you nuff said.
TonTo
 
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