Bears do it.
Why don’t we see lots of people just grabbing dying salmon from a stream after they spawn?
It seems a great way to get some fresh salmon. Easy to catch and (presumably) environmentally friendly since they have finished their lifecycle and are dying anyway. Just leave some for the bears.
Yet, I never see people doing this (which doesn’t mean they don’t). Why not?
They’re really not “fresh” at that point in their lifecycle. Their skin is falling off and their meat is pretty gross. Bears don’t care. Humans do.
This is the answer. By the time a salmon is spawning it has not been in salt water, or feeding, in quite a while. The meat is kinda washed-out. I have had it and “pretty gross” is accurate, along with tough and flavorless.
Saves the expense & inconvenience of canning!
Dang. Salmon are really just single-use engines for delivering their own gonads to spawning pools, huh…
The bears are smart enough to grab them downstream while they’re still meaty. Not a good idea for them to find out the humans stay meaty upstream.
Bears mostly eat the skin and fatty layer, often throwing the carcass with remaining protein and entrails back into the river, where it washes down and serves as nutrients for carrion eaters. The breading cycle of salmon is actually a whole ecology onto itself and is why damming rivers and interrupting the cycle is so devastating.
Stranger
Considering the vile things some people do to fish, there may be a market!
I’ll see your Surströmming and raise you…
Bears take a bite out of the belly. If they’re lucky, the get a female with roe.
I use a common breading mix on fish. No great impact on the ecology I know of.
Aren’t we all in a way…
Which spawning pools are you visiting?
Even the surrounding forest benefits from the salmon runs.
Corn meal or wheat flour for the breading? Beer batter?
Yeah, spawning salmon (with their flesh and organs decaying more by the minute) are closer to zombies than about any other medium to large animal, IMHO.
Used to call them watering holes.
The reason to leave the dead fish in the creek is because it is the natural way. It will feed the microbes and small insects in the stream so that when the new salmon hatch, they will hatch into a healthy environment.
Other animals may drag the dead fish into the forest adding marine nutrient back to the forest. Removing the dead fish is a bad idea from several different angles.
I’ve been to the pools at Vegas casinos …
A little more info now that I have more time than yesterday. I worked in the feed industry supplying food for salmon and trout hatcheries for about 30 years.
The standard practice at the time was the returning salmon came back to the hatcheries, were spawned by hand and the eggs collected. The spawned fish and the other excess fish were killed. Our trucks would bring back totes full of dead fish after delivering feed. We also had reduction plant capabilities so we could just turn the dead fish into fish meal, think fish flour.
It became clear that this was creating a sterile stream. Many options were tried. Volunteers would pack the dead, smelly fish back down stream, nobody liked that, then they could freeze the carcasses, that worked for a while but freezers are expensive and a person could only pack a few frozen salmon. Later idea was to dry the salmon and turn the meal into bricketts. So that a worker could pack 100 salmon bricketts and re-seed the creek or even be seeded by airplanes. That never became profitable.
I have been away from the business for another 30 years. I beleive the current practice is to return any live fish to the lower part of the river or stream and let them try again. Fishermen may catch them or the fish may die.
The whole point is that removing the dead fish is a bad idea. A case of well meaning humans trying to do good, but actually doing bad.
I do not know what the current hatchery practices regarding spawned salmon are, But the nutrients from the dead fish are very important to the stream, and the forest next to the stream.
Unmanaged rivers and streams in places like Alaska that no one is bothering the clean up the dead fish out of are thriving.
Dumb question; do the fish spawn only once in a lifetime? Or if the egg collection method is careful enough, can they be harvested again from the same fish?