Northwest Fishing Reports

saw a bunch of these fish in a stream getting ready to spawn and die. all fish were about 10-16 inches and orange/red in color with an orange head. Seemed to small to be salmon but trout don't die when they spawn so I'm a little puzzled...

I'd say it's a Small Red Xfish.

With no image to go off and based entirely on the description my bet is Kokanee.

Kokanee. They're mini-salmon. They are cool when they put on their colors. I get a kick out of 'em. Someday I'm going to have a mount of one made.

physher92 wrote:

saw a bunch of these fish in a stream getting ready to spawn and die. all fish were about 10-16 inches and orange/red in color with an orange head. Seemed to small to be salmon but trout don't die when they spawn so I'm a little puzzled...

As others have said, most likely they're Kokanee. I'm curious which creek/river you saw them in? Maybe we can figure out which lake they're coming from. Facebook isn't letting us see the link, but you should be able to attach it if you reply.

I've been stopping by a creek on my way home from work that I've seen Salmon in during years past and I've realized I can't identify them worth a darn. I was convinced I'd seen a whole bunch of Chums in there last year, but looking at the King County salmon counts indicated that there are never any Chums in that system (nor any waterway coming from Lake Washington as far as I could tell).

I believe I got to see a bunch of Kokanee spawning myself this evening. I changed up where I've been stopping and went a couple miles south on the same stream and found dozens and dozens of what I presume were Kokanee this evening. The light was already pretty bad by the time I arrived, but I wouldn't really say they were particularly red, but the size was definitely right. Pretty cool to see fish spawning like that.