Smoking some “Jacked” King Salmon

July 19, 2006 at 12:35 pm

I made a trip to Skagway last weekend and my kids were given some King Salmon by a generous local fisherman. They were actually “Jacks”. According to some quick research from the South Puget Salmon Enhancement Group:

The jack salmon is looked at as either a fun fish to catch on an ultra light spinning rod, or the failure of a perfectly good fish to reach it’s potential. When I say “jack”, I’m referring to a precocious male salmon that decides to grow up in a hurry. It spends one year or less in salt water before returning to fresh water to spawn like the big boys. You may wonder why they mature so quickly and are they successful spawners?

The answer to the first question is that this might be nature’s way of spreading out the genetic contribution of a particular brood year over several years. In the case of chinook salmon, the dominant year class is the age four group. However, some return at age two (jacks), some at age three, and there are even a few five year olds (six year old chinook are rare in the south Puget Sound watersheds). An environmental roadblock such as flooding or poor marine survival might limit the number of spawners in a given year.

Fortunately, the jacks would have returned before the problem arose (take El Nino years as an example, when adultsalmon, especially coho, were hard hit due to poor feeding conditions). As to how jack salmon fare in the competitive world of reproduction: they have developed a special tactic that we know as the “sneak attack”?.

While the big brutes are jousting for the right to sire the eggs of an unsuspecting female, the jack waits in the shadows and races in at just the opportune moment to add some of his own milt to the pot. In spite of its diminutive size (one to four pounds), the jack is governed by the same biological clock as its bigger adversaries. It dies shortly after spawning, and its carcass decomposes, putting important nutrients back into the stream.

The Skagway fisherman wanted to remove them from the genetic stock returning up Pullen Creek. He gave them to us and I decided to get my smoker into action. I own a great Bradley Smoker that automatically feeds flavoured disks into the smoker. You can get them in town at Sports North and the Sportslodge. I smoked it in a Zesty marinade with soy, maple syrup, assorted herbs and spices, and tobasco. I also did some freezer clearing and did some Dempster Caribou jerky from the winter.

The best is that the kids love it!

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