Sunday, March 9, 2014

Berners River Coho Salmon



As many of you know, silver (coho) salmon are my favorite salmon.  Not only are they aggressive and plentiful, but there are so many different ways to fish for them.   You can cast spinners, jigs, spoons, or backbounce eggs for them.   You can also backtroll plugs and spin 'n glo's or you can sit in a back channel and fish them with bobbers and eggs.    Another reason I like silvers so much is they return to the Kenai River in the fall and the overall river fishing pressure is light compared to the summer pursuit of king and red salmon. Have I mentioned in the past how good they taste?  Well, they do.

If I'm anything, I'm always curious, and especially about my favorite subject, fishing.  So when my old college roommate, Mark Stopha, sent me an article he had written about a silver study in Southeast Alaska, I had to share it with my readers.   One of the most interesting parts of it to me is that juvenile silver salmon will migrate back and forth between fresh and saltwater for several years before going out to sea for a year and returning to spawn.   Another thing I learned is not all salmon return to where they were born.  A small component of a run will stray into other streams to spawn.

If this piqued your interest enough, and you'd like to read Mark's entire article about Berners River coho salmon, click here.   Let me know if you learned a thing or two.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I learned that Leon is 6'3".

Good read.

JT

Anonymous said...

Good looking stream. How far away is that from the Kenai?