Spawning Chum Salmon

It was another relatively poor year of chum salmon returning to the Bella Coola River.  Normally by this time in August, the bears, gulls and eagles have all gorged on a huge abundance of fish and the tributary streams are full of live and dead spawned out fish along with a pretty pungent odour that wafts over the lower valley on a still morning.  An interesting thing with salmon on the west coast of North America is that the earliest spawning occurs in the north starting in Alaska and it gets later as you go south.  Pacific Herring are the other way around with the earliest spawning occurring around San Francisco, then getting later as you progress north into Alaska.  In Bella Coola that major chum salmon spawning is finished by the end of August.  Grizzly