I met a nice lady yesterday morning.................unfortunately for her she's delicious
One thing to remember about these transplanted Chilliwack summer reds is they are genetically adapted to travel hundreds of kilometers up the Fraser River, burning fat along the way. This fish and those filmed by Chris are dark, but don’t have the travel so little energy (fat) is used. With this stock it’s only the skin … inside these are prime eating fish.
Years ago I sampled 20 spawned summer reds for a parasite at the Chilliwack River hatchery... the flesh of these spawned fish, in late August, was still pink so I canned up a bunch of fillets; they were excellent, with lots of oil. It’s a real shame this stock will never naturally colonize the C-V but they may be finest eating fish this hatchery produces.