jonb
10/4/2015 8:35:00 AMI dont know of any natural occurance that would cause their heads to be severed like that. Wierd.
MtSi92
10/4/2015 10:16:00 AMWDFW has a program where they put spawned out hatchery fish back out into the system for nutrients. It helps the eco system, these fish look like they might be from that program.
makscoot
10/4/2015 3:19:00 PMfrom the teeth an d dark color I would say they are spawned out kings
Glad to see them there, any clue as to whether there heads were cut off after being spawned out, maybe just kids?
Glad to see them there, any clue as to whether there heads were cut off after being spawned out, maybe just kids?
Bryce
10/4/2015 6:10:00 PMI agree with others, they look like spawned out kings. I don't see an adipose fin on them so they probably were picked up by WDFW and cut open for their tags. There also is a certain bone in their head that can tell the age of the fish, this could have been harvested by WDFW as well.
There was an episode of Dirty Jobs where California fish and game was going up and down the river picking up dead spawned out salmon so they could count how many there were. They cut the fish in half to make sure it didn't get counted again when they put it back. Something similar could be going on here.
There was an episode of Dirty Jobs where California fish and game was going up and down the river picking up dead spawned out salmon so they could count how many there were. They cut the fish in half to make sure it didn't get counted again when they put it back. Something similar could be going on here.
Matt
10/5/2015 2:09:00 PMMost people here have at least "some" concept of what you have there.
The fish are spawned out Chinook salmon, and they were recovered by WDFW or another agency conducting "spawning ground surveys" in the area to help calculate this years total Chinook escapement rate. The fish would have been collected and sampled already dead in the stream. They use expansions of this number in conjunction with other information as a tool in population monitoring and season setting.
The "ear bone" of a salmon is called an otolith and forms concentric rings similar to that of a tree through the various growth stages of a salmons life. Hatcheries now-days use temperature to "control" the formation of these rings, this process is known as thermal mark banding and helps identify the hatchery of origin for adipose clipped fish. By removing the ototlith and examining it in the lab you can often tell which basin or hatchery a fish originated from, and other information about their rearing such as freshwater residence time, etc.
The fish are spawned out Chinook salmon, and they were recovered by WDFW or another agency conducting "spawning ground surveys" in the area to help calculate this years total Chinook escapement rate. The fish would have been collected and sampled already dead in the stream. They use expansions of this number in conjunction with other information as a tool in population monitoring and season setting.
The "ear bone" of a salmon is called an otolith and forms concentric rings similar to that of a tree through the various growth stages of a salmons life. Hatcheries now-days use temperature to "control" the formation of these rings, this process is known as thermal mark banding and helps identify the hatchery of origin for adipose clipped fish. By removing the ototlith and examining it in the lab you can often tell which basin or hatchery a fish originated from, and other information about their rearing such as freshwater residence time, etc.