08-17-2015, 02:52 PM
[quote MMDon][quote Bmarsh][quote MMDon]They aren't eating so . . . as long as you aren't snagging them I suppose you can do as you like. Remember, the meat is rotten so you can't eat them either.[/quote]
Actually when they are right out of the res they take San Juan worms really well and they taste great when they are that fresh. End of the day I can see both sides to catch and eat as they are fantastic or watch and appreciate the display. To each their own.[/quote]
Really, you eat that garbage. First all of their own body changes are pulled from their own flesh leaving mush and what's left goes into the spawning process. They aren't really edible from the day they begin to absorb their own scales and turn a pinkish gray. From that point on you are really just eating rotting fish flesh. [.img]http://www.bigfishtackle.com/images/gforum/dumb.gif[/img][/quote]
MMDon, that is flat out untrue. I don't fish the run, never have, it's not my style. But, I do know a couple guys who fish that run sometimes and I have a smoker, so I have encountered more than a few of these fish when they brought them over to use my smoker. They only kept the males. The meat is not rotten. Anadromous fish don't mutate into rotting zombies on a run, they just rob their body of all its fat stores. The rotting zombie fish thing starts after the fish has spawned and is dying. Anyhowz, these guys were targeting lightly colored males ascending the creek, not fish on redds. Fishing over redds is another issue entirely.
The meat gets dry and starts to taste like a white-meat hatchery trout. It really depends on how ripe the salmon. I've had some that was lightly colored up and once it was brined and properly smoked salmon jerky style, it was actually good. The riper ones tasted like a low quality trout with a lot of smoke on it. Of course, if someone is soaking fish in brine and hot smoking it dry with black pepper, you know it isn't proper table quality. But rotten? Absolutely not. Does it taste like crap compared to a proper koke? Taste is subjective, to a point.
It doesn't matter that the fish have stopped feeding. You catch them by the tried and true aggravation method. I've fished kings, pinks, chums and sockeyes in AK and those sport fisheries are based on fish that have stopped feeding but not biting. Once they are ashore, you have to aggravate those salmon. You swing a bright colored fly across a group of salmon and if one moves towards your fly, that fish may be "bite ready." Next cast, you try to present the fly to the bite ready target and see if it snaps at the fly. My buds told me that 10 years ago, the creek was a real junk show of snaggers and litterers but IDF&G aggressively patrols the run these days.
Also, I'll point out that biomass is biomass. Catching dozens of kokes in the lake instead of taking half a dozen at the inlet doesn't equate to any sort of moral superiority. It just means you took more biomass out of the run and have much better taste in fish.
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Actually when they are right out of the res they take San Juan worms really well and they taste great when they are that fresh. End of the day I can see both sides to catch and eat as they are fantastic or watch and appreciate the display. To each their own.[/quote]
Really, you eat that garbage. First all of their own body changes are pulled from their own flesh leaving mush and what's left goes into the spawning process. They aren't really edible from the day they begin to absorb their own scales and turn a pinkish gray. From that point on you are really just eating rotting fish flesh. [.img]http://www.bigfishtackle.com/images/gforum/dumb.gif[/img][/quote]
MMDon, that is flat out untrue. I don't fish the run, never have, it's not my style. But, I do know a couple guys who fish that run sometimes and I have a smoker, so I have encountered more than a few of these fish when they brought them over to use my smoker. They only kept the males. The meat is not rotten. Anadromous fish don't mutate into rotting zombies on a run, they just rob their body of all its fat stores. The rotting zombie fish thing starts after the fish has spawned and is dying. Anyhowz, these guys were targeting lightly colored males ascending the creek, not fish on redds. Fishing over redds is another issue entirely.
The meat gets dry and starts to taste like a white-meat hatchery trout. It really depends on how ripe the salmon. I've had some that was lightly colored up and once it was brined and properly smoked salmon jerky style, it was actually good. The riper ones tasted like a low quality trout with a lot of smoke on it. Of course, if someone is soaking fish in brine and hot smoking it dry with black pepper, you know it isn't proper table quality. But rotten? Absolutely not. Does it taste like crap compared to a proper koke? Taste is subjective, to a point.
It doesn't matter that the fish have stopped feeding. You catch them by the tried and true aggravation method. I've fished kings, pinks, chums and sockeyes in AK and those sport fisheries are based on fish that have stopped feeding but not biting. Once they are ashore, you have to aggravate those salmon. You swing a bright colored fly across a group of salmon and if one moves towards your fly, that fish may be "bite ready." Next cast, you try to present the fly to the bite ready target and see if it snaps at the fly. My buds told me that 10 years ago, the creek was a real junk show of snaggers and litterers but IDF&G aggressively patrols the run these days.
Also, I'll point out that biomass is biomass. Catching dozens of kokes in the lake instead of taking half a dozen at the inlet doesn't equate to any sort of moral superiority. It just means you took more biomass out of the run and have much better taste in fish.
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