Jay Anglin
Well-known member
Per your question on one of the rail posts regarding King Salmon. They are a funny fish. Being a steelhead and trout guy I tend to despise their presence. I'd liken it to having a entire West Virginia trailer park moving into your backyard....they just sorta tear everything up and stink. But, when they are "fresher" they can be very sporty. And obviously prior to their streamward migration they are one the great sportfish and better eating fish on the planet.
Many times it has a lot to do with the fishery really. If you were to King fish on the Muskegon in Michigan where they are prolific and wild you would find that you can pick a spot where a fresh slug of fish is holding and watch them come to the fly. I assume there are similar streams with the same opportunities in their native range of the Pacific watershed.
A few things happen with Chinook: First of all being a large piscivorous predator they are very aggressive by nature so many times you can get a king that hasn't been in the river long to chase a big gaudy fly or especially plugs and spinners which amounts to feeding behavior though much of it is triggered by agitation. You can also force this bahavior when they are on the redds as they naturally defend them. Second of all you will find that when they are on gravel and everybody and their brother is beating them all day everyday they eventually lock up and you start to line them by flossing or even just snag them outright in the eyeball or chin which of course I hate and will usually tell people to knock it off in a less than polite way. And of course that includes about 95% of my clients that get way too twitchy. Some days kings just open their mouths more and whether that's sexual display or not is debatable but on those days you line tons of them in the gums and everybody goes home "Champ-peen" salmon fisherman. Which is code for you're good at feedin' them boxloads of flies that the guy at the Orvis store told you the salmon were eating. But then there is the third thing which is true feeding behavior. I believe that since they are essentially dying and have a limited time to procreate that they start to put all their mental faculties into breeding and disregard many of their other instincts like hiding during the day or avoiding avian predators and large mammals(bears, humans). But with that comes a form of what I'd term dimensia, something else happens....I think they regress to riverine feeding behavior. Somewhere deep in their little brains they flip the switch that tells them to feed on eggs and nymphs and smaller forage just like they did when they were parr and smolts. I've seen 25lb kings slide off a redd laterally mid-stream and swim 10 or 15 ft to grab a size 12 stonefly or big hex pattern thousands of times. It's no different than a big trout in the Madison or Delaware nymphing opportunistically...except of course it's a big ass salmon.
Often times I think steelhead and salmon take nymph immitations as crustaceans they encountered in the estuaries and saltwater. Of course since these fish have never been exposed to these things as they are smolting into a lake that is relatively sterile in terms of species diversity compared to the ocean(save water fleas and tiny mysis shrimp).....it must be instinctive feeding behavior but that's what I think. A big hex nymph probably looks more like a shrimp than most shrimp patterns.
What the salmon bring for me is a smorgasbord of food for trout and steelhead. The eggs and flesh and nymphs they stir up...all of those things trigger aggressive feeding behavior accompanied by an uncharacteristic lack of caution by steelhead and trout. When the salmon are in, to me it doesn't get any better than a big 15lb steelhead, summer or winter-run duking it out with some gargantuan freak of a salmon and earning his keep. It's the like the grizzly fighting the wolverine. One is suprisingly agile but for the most part a lumbering mass of flesh with a formidable mouthful of teeth while the other one is sleek and muscular and very quick but has the jaw to fight back and make it hurt. It's just too much fun to watch and after about 5 or 10 minutes you toss a size 6 peach egg off the edge of the redd(so you don't accidentally catch, line or snag the salmon)and watch as the steelhead zips out in a milisecond and picks the egg up and practically hooks itself racing back to its primary feeding position directly downstream of the redd.
More often than not smaller steelhead and trout will be further downstream, possibly unseen in the shadows, lurking so as to not draw attention from the two large males but doing quite well eating the stuff that gets past the big guy as he's pre-occupied with the surly Mr Salmon.
About 5 years ago I watched 3 seven pound steelhead "cycling" into the primary feeding spot. Basically, one would slide up and tuck their snout into Daddy King's ass or tail and he'd twirl around and give chase. At precisely that time another steelhead would slide in and feed on the eggs as Momma King was on auto discharge. When the big boy comes back the feeder would relent enough to let him in and then do the ass/tail sniff/bite thing and the third fish would cycle in while the 1st would get back to the on deck position. A biology professor from the University of Chicago and I watched this for about 30 minutes and he decided to let them be which I thought was cool. They did this clockwise by the way with no variation.
You will only see that when the hillbilly salmon are in the crick and messing the place up. It's like a circus above and below the water.
Many times it has a lot to do with the fishery really. If you were to King fish on the Muskegon in Michigan where they are prolific and wild you would find that you can pick a spot where a fresh slug of fish is holding and watch them come to the fly. I assume there are similar streams with the same opportunities in their native range of the Pacific watershed.
A few things happen with Chinook: First of all being a large piscivorous predator they are very aggressive by nature so many times you can get a king that hasn't been in the river long to chase a big gaudy fly or especially plugs and spinners which amounts to feeding behavior though much of it is triggered by agitation. You can also force this bahavior when they are on the redds as they naturally defend them. Second of all you will find that when they are on gravel and everybody and their brother is beating them all day everyday they eventually lock up and you start to line them by flossing or even just snag them outright in the eyeball or chin which of course I hate and will usually tell people to knock it off in a less than polite way. And of course that includes about 95% of my clients that get way too twitchy. Some days kings just open their mouths more and whether that's sexual display or not is debatable but on those days you line tons of them in the gums and everybody goes home "Champ-peen" salmon fisherman. Which is code for you're good at feedin' them boxloads of flies that the guy at the Orvis store told you the salmon were eating. But then there is the third thing which is true feeding behavior. I believe that since they are essentially dying and have a limited time to procreate that they start to put all their mental faculties into breeding and disregard many of their other instincts like hiding during the day or avoiding avian predators and large mammals(bears, humans). But with that comes a form of what I'd term dimensia, something else happens....I think they regress to riverine feeding behavior. Somewhere deep in their little brains they flip the switch that tells them to feed on eggs and nymphs and smaller forage just like they did when they were parr and smolts. I've seen 25lb kings slide off a redd laterally mid-stream and swim 10 or 15 ft to grab a size 12 stonefly or big hex pattern thousands of times. It's no different than a big trout in the Madison or Delaware nymphing opportunistically...except of course it's a big ass salmon.
Often times I think steelhead and salmon take nymph immitations as crustaceans they encountered in the estuaries and saltwater. Of course since these fish have never been exposed to these things as they are smolting into a lake that is relatively sterile in terms of species diversity compared to the ocean(save water fleas and tiny mysis shrimp).....it must be instinctive feeding behavior but that's what I think. A big hex nymph probably looks more like a shrimp than most shrimp patterns.
What the salmon bring for me is a smorgasbord of food for trout and steelhead. The eggs and flesh and nymphs they stir up...all of those things trigger aggressive feeding behavior accompanied by an uncharacteristic lack of caution by steelhead and trout. When the salmon are in, to me it doesn't get any better than a big 15lb steelhead, summer or winter-run duking it out with some gargantuan freak of a salmon and earning his keep. It's the like the grizzly fighting the wolverine. One is suprisingly agile but for the most part a lumbering mass of flesh with a formidable mouthful of teeth while the other one is sleek and muscular and very quick but has the jaw to fight back and make it hurt. It's just too much fun to watch and after about 5 or 10 minutes you toss a size 6 peach egg off the edge of the redd(so you don't accidentally catch, line or snag the salmon)and watch as the steelhead zips out in a milisecond and picks the egg up and practically hooks itself racing back to its primary feeding position directly downstream of the redd.
More often than not smaller steelhead and trout will be further downstream, possibly unseen in the shadows, lurking so as to not draw attention from the two large males but doing quite well eating the stuff that gets past the big guy as he's pre-occupied with the surly Mr Salmon.
About 5 years ago I watched 3 seven pound steelhead "cycling" into the primary feeding spot. Basically, one would slide up and tuck their snout into Daddy King's ass or tail and he'd twirl around and give chase. At precisely that time another steelhead would slide in and feed on the eggs as Momma King was on auto discharge. When the big boy comes back the feeder would relent enough to let him in and then do the ass/tail sniff/bite thing and the third fish would cycle in while the 1st would get back to the on deck position. A biology professor from the University of Chicago and I watched this for about 30 minutes and he decided to let them be which I thought was cool. They did this clockwise by the way with no variation.
You will only see that when the hillbilly salmon are in the crick and messing the place up. It's like a circus above and below the water.
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