Kokonee Salmon Run

Kokanee Salmon are a land-locked, anadromous variety of Sockeye salmon or Oncorhynchus nerka. We recently had an amazing time visiting the Strawberry Reservoir Fish Trap where the Kokanee salmon were running up the Strawberry River in central Utah to spawn. Here is a more extensive explanation of the salmon from Wikipedia: Sockeye salmon:

Completely landlocked populations of the same species also are known. Some sockeye live and reproduce in lakes and are commonly called kokanee, which is red-fish name in the Sinixt Interior Salish language and silver trout in the Okanagan language.[7][8] They are much smaller than the anadromous variety and are rarely over 35 cm (14 in) long. In the Okanagan Lake and many others, there are two kinds of kokanee populations – one spawns in streams and the other near lake shores. Landlocked populations occur in the Yukon Territory and British Columbia in Canada, as well as, in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, New York, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming in the United States. Nantahala Lake is the only place in North Carolina where kokanee salmon are found.[3] The fish, which is native to western North America, was stocked in Nantahala Lake in the mid-1960s by the NC 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.[9]

The fish are normally silver color but only turn red when they are spawning. Once the male fish spawn, they die. The Fish and Game Department of the State of Utah supports a fish trap to help propagate the fish. Although I am not a fisherman, we had a really good time seeing the amazing fish and we even got to hold them.