Flying Fish

It's salmon season! The chinook, coho, pink, sockeye and other kinds of salmon are returning from the ocean, and making their way back up their spawning streams. There is a salmon hatchery near where I live, and I love to go watch the salmon fight their way upstream, and then onto the fish ladder. We've had enough rain recently that the creek isn't too low; some years it has been so low that the salmon almost have to walk to get to the fish ladder. The run starts late Aug or Sept, and goes until about the end of Dec., and between 10,000 and 30,000 salmon make their way up the creek to the hatchery.

Once they get there, they throw themselves time and time again at the falls, until they finally find the fish ladder and go up that. These guys are HUGE--probably at least 30-50 pounders. Some of the Chinook can get up to 120 lbs. That's a LOT of salmon!!
I LOVE it when I can actually catch them "flying"!

This is a coho--isn't he a beauty???
Once up the fish ladder, they are in a huge holding tank. There the hatchery personnel get the eggs from the females, and the milt from the males. Five to six million eggs are fertilized and raised in the hatchery each winter. In the spring, the young salmon (fry) are released into pens to grow larger. About half larger younglings (smolt) are released into the creek, and the others are sent to other locations.
The salmon will spend 1-7 years at sea, depending on the species, and will return to its spawning ground to mate and die.

There, you now know more about salmon than you wanted to know!!!