Description

While considerably smaller than their cousin the chinook, Oncorhynchus kisutch, the coho or silver salmon, is a popular light-tackle game fish, known for its hard strikes and fast runs. Native to the Pacific northwest, from Alaska down to Monterey Bay, they've been successfully introduced into the Great Lakes and several major American rivers. Coho spend the first year or two of their life in natal freshwater streams, before heading to saltwater. There they'll live one to three years, growing dramatically in this juvenile phase, before returning upstream to spawn. At that point, males develop a dark reddish coloring and hooked snoots. Silvers can be caught a variety of ways, from fly-fishing, with bait or with lures like spinners and spoons. On freshwater rivers, drift fishing is extremely popular. Lines are cast upriver and left to drift down over the fish.