Pink salmon's bad reputation isn't all deserved

As Brad Thompson's fly rod bent in half, a fish leaped from the water. The grin on the Michigan State University grad student's face spanned ear to ear as the fight concluded a few minutes later.

Thompson, in Alaska on vacation for two weeks, hooked into a pink salmon, a fish that has earned a bad reputation by anglers. While kings are famous for their size, sockeye are hailed for their taste and silvers are lauded for their fighting ability and meat, it is the pinks that are left out -- but not by all.

"I bet I've caught 30 pinks out here," Thompson said Tuesday night at Willow Creek. He didn't keep any -- the spawning males were developing their signature humps and their meat would have been mushy at best -- but that didn't mean he wasn't having fun.

Thompson was just happy to be catching fish, and that's the reason some anglers enjoy fishing for them in the first place. Craig Burke, a Wasilla angler, said he brings his 10-year-old son when the pinks are in.

"He can sit out there and catch salmon all day and all night long if he wants," Burke said. "To a 10-year-old, that's fun. It doesn't fill the freezer and it doesn't make for great fishing stories, but it makes for a good time, and that's the reason I go fishing in the first place."

Pinks started showing up in Valley streams almost two weeks ago, on the heels of the king salmon run. Along with chum salmon, they mark the beginning of the end of salmon fishing. They show up in large numbers, and they are relatively easy to catch, regardless if you are using a fly rod or a spinning outfit. In local creeks, it's not uncommon to find a hold so filled with pinks you can't retrieve your fly or spinner without hooking into a fish on accident. For those looking to have a good time catching fish, it's tough to beat fishing for pinks.

But if you want to fill your freezer, pinks can be a nuisance, and that's at the heart of the bad reputation pinks have earned. Many an Alaska fisherman heads to the banks looking to put a fish in the cooler -- and not too many pinks end up in coolers.

"You have to sort through the pinks and chum to get to the silvers, and that's about all they're good for, waiting for the silvers," said Dirk Armanst. "The reason there are so damn many pinks is because nobody takes them out of the river. Nobody wants them. By the time they get into freshwater, they're useless."

Before they get to the streams, however, pinks are one of Alaska's most important commodities. They are at the heart of the commercial fishing industry, and are thus important to many coastal communities' economies. They are the most abundant of the Pacific salmon.

Once they enter freshwater, however, they start their spawning routine, in which males develop a large hump on their back. Pinks don't spend as much time in freshwater streams as the other four salmon species, which is another reason their meat deteriorates so quickly.