Is that a salmon in your flashlight?

Via Treehugger.com comes the news that sprinkling a bit of salmon DNA nanofibers on the internals of an LED light can allow researchers to create a long lasting white LED's that can be tuned to other colors.

Fluorescent dyes (two different ones, spaced between 2 and 10 nanometers from each other) are added to the DNA molecules, which are then spun into nanofibers. These are very durable because DNA is a particularly strong polymer (it has to be!) (they should last 50 times longer than acrylic, for example).

Any of your salmon anglers ever have glowing hands after catching a big buck?

Quick! Someone corner the market...

The fishing industry discards thousands of tons of salmon sperm every year (it ruins the taste). Now Andrew Steckl, a photonics expert at the University of Cincinnati, has figured out how to use the refuse to get a 10-fold boost in the brightness of the organic light-emitting diodes used in cellphones, PDAs and some TVs.

Link via Popsci.com

Insert your own witty entendre laden comment here.

The Leaper

Salmon Brings Own Wine to Dinner

This story reported on SonomaNews.com would be pretty unbelievable had I not already been witness to an angler catching a full bottle of Killian's Irish Red beer on a cat fishing trip.

This fish isn't fighting much," he was heard to say.Eventually he brought in a king salmon that weighed more than 18 pounds - no doubt a record for Lake Shasta. Adding to the weight of the monster fish were two small bottles (tenths) of wine in its stomach.

Ok, so it was all just an inventive prank. However, you have to admire the creativity.

The Killian's story is true.

Sockeye Wine (also true) is distributed by Precept Brands.

Will they call them Slout or Tralmon?

The Telegraph over across the pond in the UK is reporting that Japanese scientists have been successful at breeding trout from salmon. What is the ultimate goal of these piscatorial alchemists? They eventually hope to turn mackerel into tuna, thereby assuring a spicy tuna roll in every pot for years to come.

The embryos they produced developed into adult trout of both sexes, capable of producing either trout sperm or eggs. These were then combined to produce healthy trout offspring.
The scientists say the technique could be used to preserve threatened species if traditional methods such as reducing fishing, breeding in captivity or restoring their habitat fail.
However, the real target of the work is the bluefin tuna – an important ingredient in Japanese sushi and sashimi.

North Carolina Salmon?

Tonight finds me in Cookeville, Tennessee which is also known as the land of the spotty internet connection. I did however manage to find just enough bandwidth here at the Hampton Inn to let you know that the North Carolina Kokanee Salmon record was broken two times in one day. Yes you read that correctly, North Carolina Salmon.

RALEIGH, N.C. (Aug. 13, 2007) – It was a hot weekend for kokanee salmon fishing — literally and figuratively — as two state records for the small salmon were broken within a day of each other.

Mark Swann of Black Mountain reeled in his 2.48-pound record breaker on Aug. 3 while fishing Nantahala Lake. The next day, Levi Towery of Forest City brought in a salmon from Nantahala that topped Swann’s by a mere two-tenths of a pound.

Levi, 9, caught his 2.68-pounder, which measured 18.4 inches in length, using a Browning rod, with a 6500C Ambassador reel and a Doctor Spoon lure.

Levi, who was fishing with his grandfather Roy Toms, also of Forest City, says he expected to catch a record breaker. He has been fishing for salmon with his grandfather for the last three years and everything he knows about catching the silvery fish, he learned from him.

Toms says he’s been catching kokanee salmon from Nantahala since the early-1980s, many of them much bigger than the one Levi reeled in on Saturday. When he saw last year that the newly established kokanee salmon state record had been set by a 9.2-ounce fish, he knew it was just a matter of time before Levi reeled in a record breaker.

Nantahala Lake is the only spot in North Carolina where kokanee salmon are found. The fish, which is native to the western United States, was stocked in Nantahala Lake in the mid-1960s by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission in an attempt to establish the species as a forage fish for other predator fishes in the lake. This stock has remained and become a favorite target for anglers.

Kokanee salmon do not grow very large, generally less than 20 inches in length, which is the reason they were stocked as a forage species. They feed almost exclusively on plankton and on small aquatic organisms.

Jake Rash, district biologist for the Wildlife Resources Commission, certified the fish, which was weighed on scales at Ingles Market in Forest City.

To qualify for a state record, anglers must have caught their fish on a hook and line, must have their fish weighed on a certified scale witnessed by one observer, have the fish positively identified by a qualified expert from the Commission and submit an application with a full, side-view photo of the fish.

For a list of all freshwater fish state records in North Carolina or for more information on fishing in North Carolina’s public, inland waters, click here.

Story and Photo via The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

74lb Kenai Salmon

Via Kenai Alaska's Peninsula Clarion we get news of this angler's massive salmon catch. As we sit in our office overlooking the cemetery, working on our latest Power Point presentations we can barely contain our drool.

"It's kind of a blur, but I remember fighting it for about 15 to 20 minutes, it kept circling and going under the boat. When I finally saw it I couldn't believe how big it was, and when we finally got it into the boat I was physically shaking," he said. "

Photo by JOSEPH ROBERTIA

Judge Says Hatchery & Wild Fish Differ

From the Duh huh file and the Oregon Statesman Journal comes the word that a Judge has declared hatchery and wild trout to be different. This tidbit of info might not be news to anyone who has ever caught a six inch native brookie in a tiny mountain stream but it is news to the current administration who wanted to count stocked fish towards endangered species listing.

U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour, sitting in Seattle, on Wednesday struck down a Bush administration decision to consider hatchery salmon with their wild counterparts in determining whether certain runs need Endangered Species Act protection.

FYI - The above trout with its pale colors and mangled fins is one of the hatchery raised variety.

Tasty Conservation

In an effort to promote wild salmon,Trout Unlimited brings us the Salmon Consumer's Bill of Rights.

"Individual consumers who care about wild Pacific salmon and steelhead recovery haven’t really had their own voice over the clamor of governments, special interests and NGOs dominating the salmon conservation landscape. Until now. TU is building the community of individual consumers committed to wild salmon and steelhead, and teaming them with the businesses and industries who share the same commitment."

We signed our John Hancock in really large print just to make our point. Now where did we put our lemon pepper?

Gulls Gone Wild

It seems a rogue band of Seagulls is wreaking havoc on efforts to restore steelhead and salmon in California. Scientist know this from a thorough examination of gull crap.

Morris traced the chip to Morgan Bond and Sean Hayes of the Salmon Ecology Team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries lab in Santa Cruz. They had been planting the chips in hatchery-raised salmon to track their progress from creeks to the open ocean. The salmon team went to the island and recovered about 60 tags, some as recently as last week. "Our suspicion is that it's sea gulls doing more of the eating," said Bond.

Of course further study will be necessary to determine how the trout tags got into the gull crap.

Hayes and Bond now hope to raise money to study whether gulls in fact are eating the salmon and steelhead before they leave creeks.

I suggest a simpler perhaps less costly approach, although it is probably not very politically correct: Gull Season!