You're a salmon ...

Pick your species. 

You're cruising down Admiralty Inlet in Puget Sound MA9 riding a 0.5 kt incoming tide/current.  You got a whiff of your home water and you're feeling good.  Soon you feel the current slackening and yet you press on, then shortly you are fighting an outgoing tide/current headwind. 

What do you do?

...by the way, you taste really good.   

im a salmon and i go for it, staying low, charging ahead, a little outgoing tide current is nothing compared to what i will be encountering on my journey to my home waters

I'm running closer to shore where the tidal current won't be as strong to fight, and I'm keeping on toward home.

You have a brain smaller than a pea. You follow the path of least resistance. You hug the shoreline or the bottom as both places slow the current due to friction. If its bad maybe you hunker down behind a rock or in a shallow depression.

Don't forget about the wind. It's pretty well believed in my area a southerly wind pushes salmon, especially those nearer to the surface, up the inlet and into the streams. Same concept, wind against current slows it providing another potential path of lesser resistance.

Love to see a tracking study. Or maybe I should go to talk to a few of my commercial fishing buddies.


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i think a salmon will allow itself to get pushed back a bit or just hold its ground in the current.  of course, there are also soft water edges in the tide rips that form that fish will congregate in (the bait get pushed there as well).

they are not entering the river tomorrow and losing a bit of ground won't kill em' especially if they are still feeding, although i know they start shutting down the closer they get to freshwater.

I stop moving forward/homeward so directly and begin looking around for something to eat until the tide makes traveling easy again. (I have no idea if salmon do this, but it's what I'd do if I were one.)

I eddy out and scope the passing hordes in hope of some vent. Tons of dying chicks with low self esteem and huge anal fins. All natural for me. I ignore your bait and thottle my caudal. There's work to be done here, son.

 

I eddy out and scope the passing hordes in hope of some vent. Tons of dying chicks with low self esteem and huge anal fins. All natural for me. I ignore your bait and thottle my caudal. There's work to be done here, son.

  most plausible answer yet.

I eddy out and scope the passing hordes in hope of some vent. Tons of dying chicks with low self esteem and huge anal fins. All natural for me. I ignore your bait and thottle my caudal. There's work to be done here, son.

We have a winner!

I eddy out and scope the passing hordes in hope of some vent. Tons of dying chicks with low self esteem and huge anal fins. All natural for me. I ignore your bait and thottle my caudal. There's work to be done here, son.

Classic Jadester! "throttle my caudal", nice!

Good Thread!.....What's a caudal?.....wait... I think I get it.

For my 2 cents....The path of least resistance is path of the spawning Salmon.

Good Thread!.....What's a caudal?.....wait... I think I get it.

For my 2 cents....The path of least resistance is path of the spawning Salmon.

Caudal fin is the tail fin  This is a great thread man salmon in habit my dreams right now!

Wes

I eddy out and scope the passing hordes in hope of some vent. Tons of dying chicks with low self esteem and huge anal fins. All natural for me. I ignore your bait and thottle my caudal. There's work to be done here, son.

  Jadester
  You come on with some really weird shit sometimes.Bizzarre,thought provoking,and funny.I feel some perverse need to meet you in person..............go figure.

Thanks, Mark. That's awful nice. One of these days...