Chinook Salmon

Chinook are the biggest of the Pacific salmon, a thick-bodied fish with a blue-green to black back, silver sides and small black spots covering the back, dorsal fin and both lobes of the tail. The black gum line at the base of the lower teeth is the diagnostic field mark; coho have a white or gray gum line and spots only on the upper tail lobe. Spawning fish darken to olive, bronze or deep red and males develop a hooked snout and large teeth.

Native from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers of California north through Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska to the Bering Sea, and across the Pacific to Japan and Russia, chinook were introduced to the Great Lakes in the 1960s to control alewives and now support a major fishery in all five lakes. Wild runs in California and the Columbia basin are a fraction of historic levels and are heavily managed through hatcheries and season closures; Alaska and parts of the Pacific Northwest remain strong.

Kings spend one to seven years at sea feeding on herring, anchovies, sardines, sand lance and squid, often holding deep near structure and bait. Returning adults enter rivers from spring through fall depending on the run, stop feeding and hold in deep pools before moving to gravel spawning grounds, where every fish dies after spawning. In the ocean and the Great Lakes they relate to temperature breaks around 50–55°F (10–13°C) and bait, feeding most at first light.

For anglers, a chinook is the trophy of the salmon family: 30-pound fish are routine in Alaska and the Great Lakes, 50-pounders still show on the Kenai and in British Columbia, and the 97-pound record came from the Kenai River. Trolling, mooching, back-bouncing, drift fishing and casting spinners each define a regional fishery, and the fish's run and dogged head-shaking fight is unmatched.