What's Up with the Mushy, Pale Kings?

[t_dub]

fished PNP yesterday, was pretty slow, only picked up about a 5# male king on the deck halfway down to Pilot Point. He looked great, actually thought it was a blackmouth until I cleaned him and he had mature milt sacks in him, but his meat was as pale and mushy as any pink you would find up the Skykomish. He only had one small herring in his gut. During the Bellingham PSA derby two weeks back, we picked up three kings, all wild, two females and one male, and all three of them were mushy and had a weird coloring I'd never seen before. The loin along the spine was pale pink and the rest of the fillets were pale white. Anyone else notice this trend or am I just lucky??

[mutinyman]

I caught a hen in skunk bay on the 17th that I thought was a little on the light side, and the egg sacs were fairly small. Don't know what that means. Could be the diet? this fish had a completely empty stomach. My only fish in 6 trips by the way

[J.D.]

"Marbled" chinook passing through the San Juans on the way to the Fraser is pretty common. Mushy saltwater caught salmon? Only common when not kept on ice with the guts in. No matter the color of the flesh. Many actually prefer the "whites" over the red chinook. I enjoy adult whites out of the salt and never would describe the flesh as mushy or any mushier than a red. Fattier and milder flavored, yes usually. Those pale fleshed blackmouth juvenilles are not in the same league tablefare-wise as an adult white however.

Maybe professor Nelly can describe the reasons marbled and/or white chinook?

[t_dub]

all those fish were kept covered in ice, zipped in a Katch Kooler and the one out of MA9 had mature milt sacs, so it wasn't a juvenile bm.

[Nelly]

While I've seen plenty of "marbled" chinook this season, I haven't seen any that I would call "mushy".

Different stocks of salmon often have a wide variety of flesh color and this year the hatchery stocks seem to have a large percentage of marbled- neither white nor red- individuals.
As JD showed in his picture showing the stark comparison of truly white and bright red meated filets, the variation in the flesh color of our chinook is very wide indeed!

The reason for the difference in color is partially diet and partially a genetic predisposition to retain the carotenoid pigment astaxanthin which is present in shellfish such as shrimp and krill.

If you think along the lines of the differing skin pigmentation of humans you're on the right track.

As Smalma mentioned in his excellent "Fish Care" post, bleeding and icing your catch is a matter of pride and pays huge dividends on the table.

That being said, T-dub.. I'm sure you took good care of your catch, Heck, you might have just got a different individual fish that suffered from belly burn and aged a little prematurely on you!