NorthWest Kayak Anglers
Regional Discussions => Oregon Kayak Fishing => Topic started by: rogerdodger on September 25, 2022, 08:14:02 AM
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a tale of 2 coho- on Tuesday, I netted an absolute butterball wild coho hen for my friend, 15# chrome beauty, a mile in from the mouth of CoosBay, it had small undeveloped egg skeins, as expected. I filleted it while he washed down the PB and the flesh was firm but very pale in color, half of one side fillet came home with me and the first chunk cooked up pure white. full of fat, firm flesh, tasty fish but white. It reminded me of cooking teal lingcod.
on Thursday, I caught my 9# fat chrome buck at nearly the same location and it was as expected, deep orange flesh, cooks up to a lighter orange.
(https://i.imgur.com/YNrvpcJ.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/ow7mGby.jpg)
I've definitely heard of 'white king salmon' and the images look similar- light color flesh that cooks up white.
I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this in an ocean or fresh from the ocean coho?
cheers, roger
https://youtu.be/LIC7AQcBQmE
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I've read recently it's all about what they were feeding on the most will affect the color of the meat.
Bait fish diet, pale meat, krill diet, orange meat.
As for cooking I have no idea.
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I've read recently it's all about what they were feeding on the most will affect the color of the meat.
Bait fish diet, pale meat, krill diet, orange meat.
As for cooking I have no idea.
I'm seeing info from a good variety of sources that white kings are the result of an inability, perhaps from a recessive gene, to metabolize the compound (astaxanthin) that creates the orange color in the flesh. But I have not confirmed whether coho ever have the same condition as white kings.
So I'm now pondering whether this coho was eating a diet low in astaxanthin or was not metabolizing it fully. And does it being a total butterball coho factor into this, noting that my orange flesh buck 2 days later was also extra chubby?
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I've had the same experience with lake trout - some are rich orange, and others are pale yellow. In Flathead Lake, a possible explanation is that the orange fish were feeding on mysis shrimp, and the yellow fish were feeding on other fish. But the lake trout in Lindbergh Lake are uniformly a deep orange color, and as far as I know, Lindbergh Lake doesn't have mysis shrimp.