Huge fuggin salmon!

[MarvB]

I'm not much of a salmon fisherman...get out a couple itmes a year is all as I prefer trout/steelhead fishing. That being said, I thought I'd share a pic in the paper today of carcass they found on one of the local streams around Redding...big azzzz salmonoid!

Fish cop in the photo is a friend of a friend deal...he sent me some other pics on his cell phone. What a montser!

This was part of the article:

It sounds like a typical fish story.

But the state scientists who found an estimated 85-pound chinook salmon have the photos to support their whopper.

"We see lots of big ones," said Doug Killam, associate fisheries biologist in state Department of Fish and Game's Red Bluff office, "but this one was just bigger than most big ones - it was just spectacular."

In a photo of the monster fish find last week on Battle Creek near Anderson, Killam strains to hold the spawned-out salmon.

"If someone would have caught this one, it probably would have been a state record," Killam said.

Measuring in at 51 inches - 4 1/4 feet - long, the male salmon was likely five to six years old, Killam said. Scientists used the salmon's girth and length to come up with their estimate of 85 pounds - and that's dead. The salmon probably weighed about 90 pounds alive when it started its swim from the Pacific Ocean back to Battle Creek.

"That's a big one," said Jeffrey David "J.D." Richey, owner of J.D. Richey Sportfishing in Sacramento. "I would have liked to catch him in his prime."

A guide for more than 10 years on the Sacramento, Richey said the biggest salmon one of his clients has caught is a 52-pounder and the state record was an 88-pound chinook caught on the Sacramento in 1979.

Not only is the fish found on Battle Creek in the league with that record catch, it's also close to biggest sport chinook salmon ever caught in the country - a 97-pounder caught on Alaska's Kenai River in 1986, said Jim Smith, a project leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Red Bluff.

 

[JoseCuervo]

No idea that Farralones had that much food and genetics swimming around them.

 

[Bambistew]

I can smell that thing through the computer...

That thing is a freak!

 

[TheTone]

Wow, prehistoric monster of a fish.

 

[T Bone]

Awesome.

I was completely unaware that CA had such spectacular salmon fishing prior to living in Reno. The 3 hour drive was well worth it most every time. Fishing below the Barge hole on the Sac was preferable to the combat fishing on the Feather.....

I always enjoyed driving over Battle Creek bridge in the dark and listening to them thrashing around.

I can't imagine even having a chance at landing a fish like that from the bank.

 

[elk_hunter]

I swear that thing is Photoshopped...

 

[ERSS]

Whoa....What a fish
Have been fishing for them out of Westport Washington and seen a few go 50+, but that thing is unreal!!

 

[cjcj]

WOW, and Elkgunner tried to tell us they were Extinct... nice fish