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Seems rather skinny for a long-river king (or any salmon as far as that goes). That isn't much of a fat layer. (I do prefer them when they don't start the grill or oven on fire though. )

BOTH... share half with your dinner partner.

Come off this 30lber my buddy got a couple weeks ago Straight out of the salt. The picture of the meat doesn't do it justice.

That's a beaut. Nothing wrong with the finny critter at all. The color seems 'off' to me only because we so rarely see a king that pale. But the proof is in the pan. Fat ones are wonderful dried/smoked, but I prefer them less oily for cooking.

I'll try to educate you on this one Art . . .

A fair number of Taku River kings are white. When I worked at the local salmon bake if was damn near impossible to convince the tourists that the white fleshed salmon steaks were king.

http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=738


The trait that keeps these fish from taking on the red pigment is passed on or inherited from the adult spawners to their offspring. The ability to metabolize carotenoids is a dominate trait; therefore the majority of king salmon have red flesh.

Essentially, all white kings come from the rivers and streams from the Fraser River in British Columbia, north to the Chilkat River in Southeast Alaska. Biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimate that, overall, approximately 5 percent of the king population in this region carry the recessive trait that produces the white flesh. However, there are river systems where upwards of 30 percent of their fish have the white flesh trait. That said, there are some smaller river systems within the Fraser River watershed where nearly 100% of the population are white-fleshed kings!

I have seen silvers like that.

Mmmmmm, is that white king?

Thank you, but I am very aware of all of that... just did not consider the Frazer or the Taku "short" systems. The maps I have seen seem to show white kings spawning fairly far upriver, too.

The Taku is pretty short, isn't it?

The Fraser, OTOH, is a long river, but perhaps it has smaller spawning tributaries which don't require a long transit?


I know our set-nets catch fat or leaner fish depending on whether the wind pushes Yukon water our way or not. The fish destined for the shorter local rivers tend to be leaner.

Taku is shorter than I thought at 54 miles...

The maps I have seen of the spawning areas for white kings show them spawning fairly high up the system, on average...

Maybe the cougars scare them away...

I baked the king with a little olive oil and seasoning rubbed on top, then covered it with lemon slices. It didn't suck.

I hear people brag about white king and how great it is, we've done blind taste tests 3 different times with fish that were caught the same day, cooked the same, and nobody has been able to tell the difference.

Never seen a cougar on Steve's boat... have seen some youthful hotties though.

If anything the red kings are better... some white king I have had was pretty earthy tasting.

I know chums are a different thing but I suspect they also get their color via some similar food sources. And while there are several factors which affect a fish's attractiveness to flies when dried in the open ambient air, whatever the very red-fleshed chums eat seems to more interesting to the flies even when those fish are cut and hung while still in rigor.

Chums and pinks are different from other salmon in that they go to salt immediately after hatching... so flavors developed would be from their saltwater cycle... or so I would think...