TheMarlinSeat

Genetics and naturalization are one part of what make the fish size limited, although I am sure there a ton of other factors. Back in the 60's and 70's the strains used on the Canadian side were descendants of the Tule River or Puget Sound strain. Over the years natural selection has bred out the Tule strain and the lineage of most salmon in Lake Ontario comes from Puget Sound seed stock. This strain is not normally much bigger than 30-40 LBS on average. The fall run Puget Sound strain strain we have also matures typically after 3 winters "at sea" or in the lake....I think Vince's points about pen vs. upstream fry source are completely valid and perhaps some of these up stream fry are living longer before maturing. Last Sunday I caught a 8 LB female Chinook that I kept to eat. It was full of small skein eggs and it looked like a 2 year old fish to me. I did wild source Chinook egg collection in Ontario at the Credit River for the Ringwood Fish Culture station for 6 years between 2006 and 12 and was part of the team that ran the program at Ringwood. We always selected males and females for large size. An interesting fact about this however, the larger (and possibly older) males and females produce poorer quality eggs and sperm, probably not unlike us humans. We had some University student arrive one year with a nifty expensive microscope that filled a minivan. They confirmed that the best quality sperm came from small young males, and the best of the best came from those pesky 1 LB jacks. This might be something that explains the drift in size over time as more and more of the smaller, high quality males contributing to egg fertilization successfully produce smaller adults of their own. In my opinion the introduction of a new strain like the BC Campbell River or the Kenai River strain that often lives 5 years or more and regularly produces 50-70 LB fish would be awesome. However, there are issues with this in that this strain and many other BC and Alaska races are spring spawners (aka Spring salmon) and this would probably generate much competition and chaos with the existing Chinook base and food web. We need to be careful that introducing new strains doesn't wreck what we already have. Anyway...just some of my thoughts. Interesting thread.... Glenn

Skipper19, I have to reapply the catnip oil often....probably every hour or so. It comes in a little spray bottle so I just give my ankles a shot every once an a while. It works quite well for me...keeps me from having to do the Chinook stomp every time there's a fish on. Wish I could find something that keeps Midges from going up my nose all day.... Sent from my SM-N900W8 using Tapatalk

I get pretty good results with Catnip oil. I buy it at the local pet store for a couple of bucks. It doesn't smell bad or like chemicals so I like to think it's not messing with my program. Downside is my neighbours cat scratches the hell out of my legs when I get back to he dock. Glenn Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk