Okanagan Lake Salmon.

[nastygunz]

https://youtu.be/gRMtKJP1q6E?si=Yx5dps4JeqJT9VhT

[Okanagan]

Thanks for the link.  I learned a bunch.

When I lived by Lake Okanagan, I always thought that there never was a salmon run into the lake because I thought that salmon could not get past Okanagan Falls, downriver from the lake.  But internet history says that sockeye salmon jumped the falls in the old days and entered Okanagan Lake. 

A dam built at the falls about 100 years ago made it impossible for salmon to get upstream past that point and exterminated that salmon run.  This new fish ladder lets fish swim up past the falls and dam and go into Okanagan Lake. 

FWIW, sockeye salmon always have a lake downstream from the river or creek in which they spawn.  Interesting, and no exceptions as far as I know.  The tiny salmon hatch in the river, drift down into the lake and grow some before going on downstream to the ocean.

Kokanee are sockeye salmon that are land locked and never go out into the ocean to spawn.  I wonder if the kokanee in Okanagan Lake are descended from the historic sockeye run that got cut off and so the sockeye spawned in creeks around the lake rather than in the ocean.  Okanagan Lake has stupendous numbers of kokanee that jam the shorelines and creeks during spawning time.  They are some of the biggest kokanee anywhere and several years ago a biologist wrote that there was likely a world record kokanee swimming around in the lake right then.   

[nastygunz]

Pretty neat! They have tried for years and years to reestablish the salmon runs up in these parts but have had zero luck and I believe they finally discontinued the program a few years ago.

[nastygunz]

Heres an interesting read on the subject-


https://www.wildlife.nh.gov/fishing-new-hampshire/fish-species-nh/atlantic-salmon

[Okanagan]

Wonder why the Atlantic salmon have not increased in number, till they are virtually extinct in some rivers.  The article says too many are dying out in the ocean to have many return.  Maybe so. 

North Pacific salmon transplant population just exploded when introduced to the Great Lakes, and to South America. 

Most of the fish farm salmon are Atlantic.  Not sure why.  I caught one in the Fraser River one time, and couldn't figure out what kind of salmon it was.  It apparently got loose from a fish farm.  I was afraid I'd kept something illegal, so kept quiet about it, and a year or two later found out that it was an Atlantic salmon.  It tasted good.

[nastygunz]

I hooked a Leviathan of a salmon in the Merrimack river on my fly rod that thing took off like a top fuel dragster, I knew it was a salmon because I hooked it right in front of me and it blew out of the water and almost gave me a cardiac event