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Silver Salmon
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The silver salmon is blessed with a large number of vernacular names, among which may be mentioned hoopid salmon, coho; kisutch, skowitz; quisutsch, and bielaya ryba. Next to the chinook and the blueback it is the most important of the genus. It reaches a length of 15 inches, and a weight of 3 to 8 pounds, and is abundant from San Francisco northward along both the American and Asiatic coasts, entering the shorter coastal streams late in the fall. It occurs in Asiatic waters as far south as Japan. In our waters it is especially abundant in Puget Sound, the fjords of Alaska, and in the shorter rivers of Washington and Oregon.
As a food-fish, though inferior to the chinook and the blueback, it is of great importance. Large quantities are canned every year on the Oregon and Washington coasts; it is one of the best species to ship fresh.
Its spawning season is later than that of the chinook. They first appear in the southern end of Puget Sound about the first of September, and the run usually lasts until the first or middle of November. An examination of more than 2,000 examples at Celilo on the Columbia River in September and October indicated that their spawning time would not be later than October. This species is common in Japan.
Head 4; depth 4; D. 10; A. 13 or 14; Br. 13 or 14; pyloric coeca very large and few, 45 to 80; scales 25-127-29; gillrakers 10+13, rather long and slender, nearly as long as eye. Body slender and compressed; head short, shorter than in chinook of same size, very conical, the snout bluntly pointed; interorbital space broad and strongly convex; opercle and preopercle strongly convex behind, the preopercle very broad, with the lower limb little developed; eye much smaller than in chinook of same size; maxillary slender and narrow, but extending somewhat beyond the eye; teeth very few and small, only 2 or 3 on the vomer, those on tongue very feeble; fins small. Colour, bluish green on back, the sides silvery, with dark punctulations; no spots except a few rather obscure ones on top of head, back, dorsal fin, adipose fin, and the rudimentary upper rays of the caudal; pectorals dusky, and with dusky edge; sides of head without dark colouration as seen in the chinook; males mostly red in fall, and with the usual changes of form.
The silver salmon is easily distinguished from the chinook, which it most resembles, by its fewer scales, fewer pyloric coeca, and fewer branchiostegals.