October 6, 2007 this time study began
Pine Creek
Manistee County, MIBy Capt. John King
Then updated every year

1.Dead Kings

2.Salmon Spawning

3.Pine Creek Bridge

4.Decaying King

You Tube video taken
on Oct. 7, 2012

Completing
Circle

Understanding just how
to catch fish on the Great Lakes is only one part of the life cycle of our
Great Lakes fish. The salmon leave Lake Michigan and
enter the rivers, or streams to come full circle. Procreating the
future generations. Some things are too important for being
buried in my Captain's Log entries and this is one of them. That's
the motive behind this page.

Kings start trickling in the Big
Manistee River system sometime soon after the 4th of July. This continues to build thru the second
week of September, then seems to be on wane by the 4th week of
September. The Kings transition from lake fish (silvery coloration)
into mature fall spawners and turn various shades of black, brown, and
yellowish. Upon entering the rivers, streams, or creeks the Salmon
develop a slim coating seldom seen on the big water, unless you catch a
very dark mature harbor King.

Coho tend to run slightly later then Kings, but both can be spawning on
the redds (gravel fish nests) at the same time. Males generally
position themselves slightly downstream from hens, or females.

Natural
Camouflage

If
you compare photo number 5 (shot with flash on) and photo number 6,
you'll see how nature protects these fish. This would be more self
evident if the Salmon were in a undercut deep bank in 5 feet of
water. As the salmon age, some type of fungus starting growing on
the fish in case you were wondering what the white splotches were.
Steelhead in the spring will exhibit this same type of markings after
spawning, just like the Salmon do.

Movies
1 & 2 are better suited for dialup users. I recommend movies 3
& 4 for high speed connections, ...unless you have a lot of
patience with dial up. Please keep in mind, I am not a Steven Spielberg, or George Lucus, but
you will capture the natural flavor of being in the creek with waders
on, sloshing around amidst naturally reproducing Salmon.

Seeing
things in the first person can give a better handle on what goes on during the spawning
process. The movies should give you a pretty good idea. You'll see fish
spawning in less than a foot of water and in most cases, the fish will be on
gravel. Left undisturbed, spawning Salmon are loud from the
thrashing around. They do this splashing stuff in an effort to bury/anchor the eggs under
gravel. That way the water flow provides oxygen to the fertilized eggs.

5.On Gravel

6.Camo King

7.Scattered Eggs

8.Eggs Close-up

9.Litterbugs

Eggs

In photo
numbers 7 and 8 you'll see free floating eggs that drifted into slack
water. With the tons of eggs being dropped, a large amount will
not get buried under gravel.

The
whole spawning ritual is directed propagation of the species. The
number of eggs in a female is a number higher than anyone would want to count
(thousands). Natural spawning is highly
inefficient. Some eggs will get washed aside in slack
water, as they drift downstream and get silted over. Thusly, not
hatching, but many will get covered under the gravel, eventually
hatching. I read some place, eggs have been retrieved as deep as
3 feet, when fish biologists dug up nesting areas.

The size of eggs photographed are at best 2/3 of what our King Salmon used to
have. Smaller eggs means these fish do not have the nourishment
from a larger eggs sac to get a head start. The end product could
be the much smaller Kings we've been starting to see since 2004.
In 2007, any fish over 20 pounds was a goodie. Not so 5 years ago
when over 20s were only box fillers!

Pine
Creek

Kinda between a rock and a hard place about making location public due to slob
litterbugs. There's proof the stream fishermen do not respect this place like
they should. The location is the Huff Road Bridge. It's
about 4 to 5 miles west of Wellston, MI. Huff Road is tee road
that runs off the north of M55. If you do visit this place, or any
other stream, please
pack your junk out with you. That one spawn bottle left behind
gives all fishermen a bad name.

Photo number 9 clearly shows the litter left behind. I picked up
this pile that was near my truck in a minute or two.

10/4/2010 Update

Since this page was completed 3-4 years ago the Salmon run
in the natural Trout Stream has fell off a cliff. DNR cut the
Chinook/King Salmon plant by 25% with all states surrounding Lk. MI doing
the same. Visual record from 2007 thru 2010 shows a 75% decline in
Salmon returning to this stream. Not a 25% decline like our DNRs had
planned for. Here's some photos to prove my point:

Below 5 photos all taken in
early October show a shrinking Salmon run on the same exact gravel bar
on Pine Creek. 2010 had noticeably smaller Salmon and the run came
later than the previous 3 seasons with less fish. 2011 shows in a
definite increase in fish, but didn't see the jumbo over 20 pounders we
caught during the July, August, and September big lake season.

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

It's been a pleasure to share this page, photos and movies with
you. Majority of fishing articles are written by all are designed
with underlying motive to sell you some kind
of product. Pages like this break with that tradition and are a
reel-pleasure for me to do.

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