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http://www.omniture.com --> Sections Home Page Local News AP News Blogs Archives Business Classifieds Event Calendar Forums Life Opinion Obituaries Multimedia Photo Gallery Readers Photo Gallery Sports Tempo Weather Road Cams Special Coverage 2006 Britt Festivals --> Shop Our Valley AutoFinder HomeFinder JobFinder Search Our Valley Special Sections Distinctly Northwest Readers' Choice Homelife Magazine Joy Magazine Oregon Golf Info Oregon Wine Info Other Publications Local Links Ashland News eSouthernOregon Newspapers In Education Personals Moving Here Movie Listings TV Listings Volunteer Customer Service Advertise With Us Media Kit Place Classified Ad Contact Us FAQ's Home Delivery Site Map --> Email Story to a Friend February 1, 2007 Medford man reels in quite the fish story ROGUE RIVER — As Jack Burns pulled on his steelhead rod and chased this immense fish he battled Saturday in the Rogue River, he knew he hooked into something special. It turns out that the fish was special, but for the wrong reason. This fish hooked in a classic steelhead stretch near Valley of the Rogue State Park fought like something rarely seen on the Rogue — a winter steelhead well-eclipsing 20 pounds. "I thought, this thing could be a 20-plus pound steelhead," says Burns, 53, of Medford. "I thought it was going to put me in the history books. "Then I could see this black tail in the water and I thought, this isn't right," he says. "This isn't right at all." Advertisement And when the fish flopped into the net, Burns' jaw dropped when he saw his fish's black gums, the tell-tale giveaway that this was no historical steelhead. "It was a 30-pound chinook salmon," Burns says. "This was obviously a salmon. I just don't know what kind." Exactly just what type of chinook Burns happened to find in perhaps the least likely of places on the Rogue and at the least likely of times is a mystery not easily solved. Short of a Jerry Springer-like "Who's Your Daddy" genetic test, it's hard to fathom the exact identity and origin of the subject of this winter fish tale. "It's anybody's guess," says Todd Confer, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist in Gold Beach. "We always say that you can find a salmon somewhere in the Rogue almost any month of the year," Confer says. "But January and February are the least likely months to run into one." Since Burns ran into this 36-inch chinook on Jan. 25 in the Rogue, it's legally considered the first Rogue spring chinook of the season, even though that's the least likely possible identity. "That's almost certainly the case, that it's not a Rogue spring chinook," says Tom Satterthwaite, a fisheries scientist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife who has studied the Rogue for more than 25 years. Spring chinook aren't due into the lower Rogue for another month, and early spring chinook would be bright skinned, pink-meated flesh and tiny eggs. Burns' female chinook had big and plentiful eggs still stuck to the skeins, as if it were preparing to spawn this spring. It's meat wasn't great — kind of murky and definitely not of springer quality, Burns says. The fish could possibly be a very late middle Rogue fall chinook or a very late and very lost fall chinook from lower Rogue tributaries near Gold Beach. But those options also seem unlikely. To have survived at least two months longer than even the latest-running Rogue fall chinook, the salmon likely would have been so near-death and decomposed that Burn likely would have smelled the fish before he saw it. But the salmon was every bit as bright and feisty as a fall chinook caught in August near Gold Ray Dam. "This fish really fought hard," Burns says. "It was really healthy." Besides, Satterthwaite says, spawning time among salmon, steelhead and trout species, called "salmonids," is genetically inherited. And among these species, a chinook is the most likely salmonid to follow his parents' spawning time. There are no known spring-spawning chinook anywhere in the Rogue. "That certainly makes it less likely to be an anomaly" among Rogue spring or fall chinook, Satterthwaite says. If it's neither very late nor very early, than this chinook has to be very lost, a stray from another basin. Strange strains of salmon straying into the Rogue are not uncommon. Klamath River basin coho are notorious strayers into the Rogue, where they are sometimes found on spawning beds and even captured at Cole Rivers Hatchery. The hatchery also found itself hosting a handful of sockeye salmon twice in the 1990s, even though the closest sockeye run to the Rogue is the Columbia River. Elk River fall chinook show up in the lower Rogue regularly enough that, had Burns caught this fish near Gold Beach, it would be a non-story, says Confer, the Gold Beach biologist. But late-run Elk River salmon take only a short migration run of a few miles. Burns' fish swam a whopping 113 miles to reach Valley of the Rogue State Park. Perhaps the most logical place to find a chinook of this quality, at this stage in its life history and at this time isn't anywhere here. The Sacramento River basin has an unusual run of rare "winter" chinook that begin their long spawning run in late November. They were declared endangered in 1994, and only a handful return to the Redding, Calif. area each winter. Also, those winter chinook start spawning in April, though a 30-pounder is even a very rare chinook for this very rare run of normally smaller chinook. "Speaking straight probability, there may be high potential for it to be a Sacramento Valley fish," Satterthwaite says. So maybe Burns' catch really is something for the history books after all. He could be the only guy legally to keep one of the most rare wild chinook on the West coast in fresh water — a huge, endangered Sacramento River chinook — for well over a decade. All it took was a January steelhead trip on the Rogue and the improbable straying of a rare fish to make that happen. "I just thought it was the biggest steelhead in the world," Burns says. "I couldn't believe what happened," Burns says. "I was just glad when I found out I wasn't breaking the law." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] . Advertisement Copyright © 1997-2007 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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