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[Sam Salmon]

Unfortunately they taste awful.

Nonsense!

Marbled Springs taste delicious-as Milo or anyone who has caught one can tell you.

[adriaticum]

Didn't mean those caught in the ocean!

[Steelhawk]

Marble is the best tasting salmon for sashimi for me. Caught one years back and still craving for another catch but none since. Sigh. Welcome a trade with any one for my Fraser caught red spring. 

Just to add some spice to the discussion, hehe. It is quite a mystery of nature. Why is it that fish don't naturally cross breed, even between close relatives like white & red springs? Considering that their eyes cannot see their own body and there is no mirror to check its own shape & form, how the heck fish can pick out which partner is the right one to go to bed with?  I mean, how does a silver coho doe say to another silver jack spring (of similar size) that he is not wanted but a buck coho will do? Perhaps science guys like Rodney & Milo can enlight us. 

[milo]

Unfortunately they taste awful.
Adriaticum

My only explanation for your comment above is that you haven't really had the opportunity to catch a good white spring. It doesn't surprise me.
White springs caught in the Vedder are not exactly the best tasting fish in the frying pan or on the BBQ. But I garantee that there will be many people who will tell you that they taste pretty good when they are smoked (as long as they haven't reached the 'boot' stage - in which case, regardless of their coloration, they will taste foul.
Interestingly enough (and this is something that just dawned upon me), it appears that white-fleshed chinook do degrade more rapidly in the river than their red or marbled brethren. Could it be that the pigment carotenoid serves as a natural 'preserver' - allowing red fleshed salmon to conserve the quality of their meat for a longer time than those fish that lack it entirely (white springs)? I don't have an answer to this one, but based on empirical evidence (perfect tasting white chinook are hard to find in rivers), it might as well be true. I have had the opportunity to score a white chinook in the ocean and the taste was perfect. I have also caught a few white springs in the Fraser, with mixed results as to the flavour of the flesh. I do remember one fish I caught last year - it was memorable - 32 pounds of pure eating heaven.
Vedder whites? It would have to be an exceptionally fresh fish and my freezer exceptionally empty for me to kill one to eat it fresh (i.e. not smoked).
All I can say, Adriaticum, don't discard whites or marbles yet. Chances are if you get to catch one in the ocean or the Fraser, it will be fine tasting tablefare.

Why is it that fish don't naturally cross breed, even between close relatives like white & red springs?

I don't think you can talk about crossbreeding among red and white chinooks, as they are the same species. They do mix, as per frenchy's post above (reply # 5). However, not all the offspring will necessarily be marbled, only those that inherit the genetic predisposition from the white parent.

As to the second part of your query, Steelhawk, I am sure that if different species of salmon share a common spawning ground, there will be some attempts at interbreeding, but mother nature has mechanisms in place to prevent eggs from one species to become fertilized with eggs from another. To draw a parallel, in theory, a human can have intercourse with an ape, but no offspring will result from it. Why? The two species, in spite of the similarity in their DNA, are just too different for the miracle of life to take place. The mechanism is too complicated to explain in detail here, but essentially, it comes down to a difference in the number of chromosomes - plus a bunch of other variables. (Genetics is not exactly my forte )
Now someone might ask about the "Liger" (cross between lion and tiger) or the mule (cross between an horse and a donkey). Although interbreeding among these species does (rarely) result in offspring, those offspring can not produce other offspring, which effectively impedes the creation and perpetutation of a species. Therefore, ligers, mules, tigons, hinnys, and other offspring resulting from interspecies breeding, are not considered new species but rather hybrids.

All that said, it could be that there is the occasional hybrid stemming from different salmon species interbreeding (as the aforementioned pinook), but I will bet dollars to donuts that they cannot produce other pinooks. If they did, we would have a distinct species by now. Mother Nature has its mysterious and fascinating ways to decide when and where a new species will evolve. And that process is much more complicated than just crossbreeding. It takes millions of years of evolution, of adapting to the environment, of competing against existing species and so on. The process is called natural speciation, and you can learn more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation

Ok now. The teacher is tired, and I still got 18 essays to correct for tomorrow. And it's not about fish.

Tight lines,

Milo

[adriaticum]

Thanks again Milo, your input is greatly appreciated.
I guess I was lucky with my first batch of springs and they tasted great and then 2nd, 3rd batches were getting progressively worse.
I was noticing that the redness in their meat was dissapearing as the time went by. And the taste was going south.
Wondered why they went bad so quickly and I was cathing them on the same river, same spot just 1 and 2 weeks later.
Must have caught the 1st batch early just as they started showing on the Vedder.
I did quite a bit of research on that and nothing really made sense.

On another note my last name starts with Milo and ends with ic,
ain't that funny 

Cheers,
Adriaticum

[milo]

You are welcome, Mr. Milo---ic! 

Guessing from your handle name, you must be of Serbian and/or Croatian origin, as am I.

If so...bistro! Vidimo se na vodi!

Pozdrav,

Milo (Ilic)

[BwiBwi]

Actually in genetics if red spring = RR and white spring = WW  You need to know if it's really single loci that's controlling or is it double loci?  And is RR dominant and WW recesive or v.s.?
Because if one is dominant and the other is recesive than really when you cross the two you'll get RR RW WR WW in which case you'll get 75% red spring and 25% white spring.  Though RW and WR has white gene but since it's recesive it won't show. 

[milo]

Too complicated already, but just to add to your enigma: what if it turns out that RWs or WRs actually can't pass the depigmentation trait directly to their offspring, requiring a WW partner to do so?

If there's ever a DNA study on this, I volunteer to catch the specimens and leave the science of it to biologists.
I'd rather be fishin'!

[wagz]

Red springs in the Stamp system color up quickly.
 Were these fish used as brood stock for the early Chilliwack Reds??

[BwiBwi]

Too complicated already, but just to add to your enigma: what if it turns out that RWs or WRs actually can't pass the depigmentation trait directly to their offspring, requiring a WW partner to do so?

If there's ever a DNA study on this, I volunteer to catch the specimens and leave the science of it to biologists.
I'd rather be fishin'!

In assumption if W is of a recessive trait then in order for RW or WR to produce white spring WW then you either have RW and RW (WR) resulting in RR, RW, WR, WW, which is a 25% chance of getting white spring.  OR, you can do RW (WR) with WW then the result is RW, RW, WW, WW, which is 50% chance of getting white spring.

Yap like you said, I would rather be catching them then trying to figure this out.

[SnaggedADuck]

how would you tell if its a cross visually?

[clarki]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2004/1024/taste.html

Although not directly related to the discussion at hand about marbled salmon, Milo's comment of ivory salmon prompted me to share this dated, but interesting, article about the table-worthiness of white springs   
 

[milo]

how would you tell if its a cross visually?

If you are referring to how you can tell whether a chinook is marbled before you cut it, you can't. It is a lottery.

However, I have been testing a theory lately, and I would like to ask members for input on this one.

All springs have white beliies in the ocean, and it is pretty darn impossible to determine what colour their flesh is unless you kill them and cut them.

However, I have found that red springs in rivers tend to get a sort of a "copperish" tinge to their bellies. Whites, OTOH, get a sort of a greyish tinge to their bellies instead. I have been able to determine the colour of a river caught chinook's flesh with close to 100% accuracy lately. All this, of course, applies to fresh fish which is still more or less chrome on the outside. Boots are easily identifiable, as red springs become of a brown-brick colour, whereas whites turn all sorts of shades of olive, gray - even black (yuck!).

Please keep this in mind and let me know if my theory has any validity.
Thanks,

Milo

Red springs in the Stamp system color up quickly.
Were these fish used as brood stock for the early Chilliwack Reds??

Nope, the early Chilliwack red springs are Upper Fraser fish broodstock.

[Sam Salmon]

Milo-I believe what you're seeing is sometimes called a 'suntan' and can be seen on the side of the fish if the light is right-the flat monochromatic light conditions we often live under are sometimes difficult.

However examining the flesh just behind the gill plate shows the colour of the meat (with the reddest and whitest fish) as you've posted there are many colour variations to be found a person can still be fooled.

[frenchy]

Actually in genetics if red spring = RR and white spring = WW  You need to know if it's really single loci that's controlling or is it double loci?  And is RR dominant and WW recesive or v.s.?
Because if one is dominant and the other is recesive than really when you cross the two you'll get RR RW WR WW in which case you'll get 75% red spring and 25% white spring.  Though RW and WR has white gene but since it's recesive it won't show. 

Oh it is single loci, it is established and heterozygotes are marble fish. I do not know why heterozygotes are marbled and not pinkish (intermediate between red and white), but it may be because one allele or the other is expressed in one particular muscular fiber or it may have something to do with the diffusion of the pigment in the tissue.

Concerning why white fish spoil faster than red fish. I asked that to Nog (we have the same source Milo) and he told me that's because  white fish have a higher fat content, so the gene responsible for carotenoid fixation may also be implied in fat metabolism. But I am not a biochemist, so I cannot give any more answer about that.

I know a bit more about reproductive isolation and speciation (I work on this biological process). It would be a bit too long to develop it here, but would be happy to talk about it around a beer... But to start you can think that the different species have different spawing time and location, probably different spawning behavior and sexual characteristics (the spawning colors for example) and probably also some genetic incompatibilities (even if you have hybrid offspring, they may not be viable or may be sterile).