Thread: Salmon

Originally Posted by Sharki

Favourite lure for salmon and fly?

Silver zeddy would have accounted for a very large proportion of salmon caught in NZ waters

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Most of the river salmon I have caught have had a silver spoon in their mouths. Although the last one was on a lumo soft bait.

Originally Posted by kukuwai

Silver zeddy would have accounted for a very large proportion of salmon caught in NZ waters

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Yes or white or fluorescent orange or green although the last one I caught last year was on an American Import

Originally Posted by mikee

Yes or white or fluorescent orange or green although the last one I caught last year was on an American Import

Blue fox??

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Yip, Colorado Spoon or silver zeddy with a bit of red. A silver ticer for out in the surf
The old man used to make his own lures (feathered) with a fairly substantial hook

Originally Posted by kukuwai

Blue fox??

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Originally Posted by mikee

Attachment 240856

Sure looks deadly

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Originally Posted by Micky Duck

so Dads fish was huge.......the genetics were there...not all the big ones were caught,the genetics must still be there....use their milt and eggs in hatchery and see if in 10-15 years we are gaining......

It was explained to me thus by a mate who did his masters thesis on NZ salmon with a view on the sports fishery not the commercial fishery ...
One of the issues with hatchery v wild fish is that hatchery fish are very used to living very close to each other and the competition between themselves is very intense, wild salmon not so. So we have juvenile hatchery and wild salmon coming down the river together and inevitably they will shoal up and or interact with each other. There is a favoured rock to sit behind on the journey down the river.. the hatchery fish are comfortable being cheek to jowl with each other the wild fish not so and so the wild fish are the first to be expelled from behind the favoured rock and are more exposed to predation and less feed coming past..

What it means is that those genetics that had adapted to our rivers are now no longer an advantage in fact they are a hinderance to survival ..

Originally Posted by kukuwai

Sure looks deadly

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Oh it was the "lucky lure" for sure!

Originally Posted by Bos

Reason I remember it so well is because the guy went home to Ashburton and put his photo on the front page of the paper. For the next couple of weeks every man and his dog was at the mouth so not even standing room like before

Just like youtube then Bos

Great photos, cheers for that. There are a few similar floating about in our family from the clutha and even the makarora (before they dammed the clutha)... Imagine that !!!



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Originally Posted by Bos

Yip, Colorado Spoon or silver zeddy with a bit of red. A silver ticer for out in the surf
The old man used to make his own lures (feathered) with a fairly substantial hook

Use to make all my own zeddys,spoons and ticers out of hex brass.Power houses use to have a lot of copper earth strapping left over to make zeddys out of.Get them plated in Timaru bottom of north street.

Originally Posted by kukuwai

Just like youtube then Bos

Great photos, cheers for that. There are a few similar floating about in our family from the clutha and even the makarora (before they dammed the clutha)... Imagine that !!!



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Makarora a great river mouth for night fishing years ago.

Still got the zeddy on my truck keys that I caught my 29 lb salmon on.

Not very silver ne more.lols

Super true on the density issue of H vs W sore head

I reckon the other side of the coin is that hatchery fish have been packed into a raceway and only know... "food" "pellet" movement above..."food" "pellet" so they ain't exactly street smart
However wild fish are dodging and weaving and hunting from the day they're born so they're tough...however they're also usually smaller.
There's a gigantic (several million tagged) study that looks at whether it's better to transport fish to the ocean (estuary), thus avoiding predation, or let them travel in the river and tough it out and learn and have the weak ones picked off...turns out yes it's better for overall smolt survival to transport em and yes run of the river fish survive better to adults. Classic Catch22, laterally depends on what time (day) of year they are transported, river flow, etc.

To get back to the subject...I can't imagine catching a chinook 100m from the salt as y'all do here!! They're BEAUTIFUL!!!

I think our biggest issue is the ocean temperature. These are cold water fish and our ocean is warming quickly.