yak2you2
2011-05-06 04:43:49
I thought this might make for an interesting thread. A couple of years ago I caught a king that had about a 3" long peice of longline in his belly. It had pink and green tracer, and was frayed out on both ends. Kind of looked like a little worm, which is why he decided to eat it I'm guessing. A friend told me he got a coho once that had a perfectly folded up Mylar pop tart wrapper in it. Another friend told me this spring he caught a king that had 4 tooth picks in his belly, and not another hook mark other than his own. apparently this fish was some sort of an expert at nabbing baits from guys before he finally got caught. So lets here what you have found....
carojae
2011-05-06 15:55:15
A few years back while trolling my wife cleaned out our ice chest while trying to find something for lunch. We had a old opened package of sliced ham (oval slice) which she threw overboard.
A couple hours later listening to radio talk, Bruce Smith and his wife reported finding a nice piece of ham in one of the coho's. Was it oval shaped, we asked? It was.... :D
That provided a pretty good laugh and brought our cool gear into question. Maybe all we need is some lunch meat wrapped around the hook.
Jim
Abundance
2011-05-06 16:30:00
I don't think that ive found anything too weird, but i've always wondered about this one coho that had a belly full of rock weed. What was he thinking? Was he going vegetarian? Was he particularly attracted to that shade of green? Another time, I was all alone on a drag, catching a fair scratch. I pulled up one coho that was still throwing up salmon eggs that he had been snatching from the gutpiles I had thrown over. I found out that day that salmon guts sometimes surprisingly good troll bait. I did the same thing with a halibut a few years before, but its less surprising to see a halibut gulp watever down than a salmon. I caught one coho last year that was full of those little jellyfish. If I remember right he was a skinny one. There can't be much nutrition in that for him. I did switch to transparent hootchies though, and actually caught a few more than with colored ones. I remember one other time, I was still a deckhand, that a weird current came through with lots of sharks and tuna. We pulled up a salmon full of what looked like goldfish. I dont think that any other salmon had them. Maybe their poisonous and we caught him just in time. Thats all that I can remember offhand. This is going to be a fun thread!
Salty
2011-05-06 22:11:47
Great idea for a thread. Chums eat jellyfish all the time, but I have never heard of coho eating them before.
Here is an interesting observation that I wonder if others have noticed. Some falls there are a lot of baby blackcod off the coast and the coho can be just stuffed with them. But, I have never seen a baby blackcod in a Chinook. Anyone else noticed this phenomena?
frozenatsea
2011-05-07 15:50:17
while fishing for chums in Eastern Channel many years ago, my deckhand pulled a purple colored condom out of the belly of a chum. Go figure.
mydona
2011-05-07 16:06:14
I caught a Coho with a 1" dia x 2" inch piece of powder blue corrugated plastic bilged pump hose in his belly. I wondered if he'd would have been able to "pass" it. It was a sunny day with a steady bite and a bit of time between pulls, so I rigged it on a leader from 2 sides for an effective spin and sent it out 3 spreads from the bottom not wanting to give it an unfair advantage. Without a flasher, it caught 6 more fish in the 2nd half of a day's fishing. The fallowing morning I sent it back out for the coffee drag. By 8 am I'd gotten only 1 more, but because of that garbage I trolled I now have a set of powder blue spoons I just had to have in my arsenal of junk
yak2you2
2011-05-08 03:55:57
They make purple colored condoms? Interesting. I've seen glow in the dark ones before, maybe were on the verge of discovery here?
kingfisher
2011-05-08 21:38:15
I have never found anything to weird in king salmon belly's accept one time i caught a nice king down deep, and he was just filled with shrimp never seen any thing like it still today. But coho's on the other hand eat some random ass food besides herring and needle fish. Last fall i was catching silvers with shaker kings, dock perch, tom cod i had one with about 15 or 20 cut plug heads in his belly. But still haven't found much garbage or condoms.. ;)
Great topic. I believe most of us have landed fish while sport fishing that have herring "trimmings" in their guts - the left-overs that are either heads, the tails from splitting-out the tails on whole herring, and the edges from side strips when you trim them for full effect. This is especially true when you are anchored in a likely spot and fishing for Kings.
Trolling is a little different but I have found fresh halibut "nuts" in both chum and Coho fishing just north of Cape Edgecumbe within sight of a couple of long-liners. I had a deckhand call me back to the pit while Coho fishing off Whale Bay in the mid-90s and show me a Coho stomach stuffed with little jellyfish (a first for me).
Jack Tramibitas was a Juneau power-troller back in the "good old days" who used to troll with the "Atka" in Icy Straits. Jack pointed-out a string of 4 soda or beer can pull tabs hanging on the wall inside his wheelhouse that he took out of the stomach of a Coho on the Homeshore.
Takhini
2011-06-24 09:47:19
A few years ago I found a quarter sized piece of fish tote in a coho belly. Baby blue, kind of makes me wonder if that was a fluke or if that is an underused color.
dvharman
2011-09-11 04:32:03
slightly off topic bit i caught a halibut with a whole potato in his stomach
Lunasea
2011-11-20 15:48:33
This isn't so much weird as a question. What is up with those disgusting tiny snails that they eat sometimes? They are the most foul smelling rancid disgusting thing especially when partially digested. Are they little pelagic snails, or what? Is anyone else revolted when they clean fish with these in their bellies?