UTERAlaska & Hawaii fish species: all 12
12 species — inshore, surf, reef, offshore, sharks, fresh water, and the bait. What each one is, what it eats, how to fish it, the live bait for it, what it's worth in the book, and the rule — with the date the rule was checked.
The points scale
rarity and size; bait scores nothingA catch scores the fish's base points times how many, up to double again for a trophy-size fish photographed on a ruler, plus ten for a photo and fifty for the first of a species in your book.
Inshore
6 fish
Sockeye (red) salmon
The red: a plankton-eater that rarely bites a lure in the ocean, then pours into Alaska's river mouths by the million in July.
Pink (humpy) salmon
The humpy: the smallest and most numerous salmon, on a strict two-year cycle — Puget Sound gets millions in odd years and almost none in even years; Alaska gets them every summer.
Chum (dog) salmon
The dog salmon: a big, calico-barred, hard-pulling fish with a mouth full of teeth, late in the year in Puget Sound and Hood Canal and summer in Alaska's terminal areas.
Steelhead
The sea-run rainbow trout: chrome-bright from the ocean, running the coastal rivers from California to Alaska in winter (and some in summer).
Giant trevally (ulua)
The ulua: Hawaii's shoreline king, a reef-crushing jack fished at night off the lava ledges on slide-bait rigs and heavy gear.
Bluefin trevally (omilu)
The omilu: the electric-blue papio of the reef flats and surf zones, hunting in packs and hitting plugs and flies at dawn and dusk..
Reef & bottom
3 fish
Pacific halibut
The barn door: a flatfish that grows past 300 pounds on the gravel banks from northern California to the Bering Sea.
Lingcod
Not a cod: a toothy, green-fleshed rock predator of the whole West Coast and Alaska, the reef fish everyone wants.
Rockfish
Dozens of species — black, blue, vermilion, copper, canary, yelloweye — on every reef from San Diego to Kodiak, the backbone of the West Coast half-day boat.
Offshore
3 fish
Chinook (king) salmon
The king: the biggest Pacific salmon, black-gummed, spotted on both tail lobes, feeding on herring and anchovy in the ocean from Monterey to Kodiak before it runs home to its river.
Coho (silver) salmon
The silver: an acrobat that hits fast-trolled lures near the surface all summer and floods the bays and river mouths in the fall from Oregon to Kodiak.
Striped marlin
The billfish of the Southern California late summer and the Hawaiian winter, tailing on the surface where you can pitch to it.