Pink Salmon

If your first choice was coho salmon, give yourself credit for a good (but not correct) answer. I would have given that same answer. However, after doing a little research, I learned that coho were first stocked in the Great Lakes in 1966, 10 years after the successful (and possibly inadvertent) introduction of about 21,000 pink salmon into northwestern Lake Superior. Though pink salmon are relatively unimportant to anglers, there are small, self-sustaining populations of this species dispersed throughout the upper Great Lakes (UW Sea Grant Institute, 1999). Chinook Salmon (pictured below), the largest and most successful of the salmon species to be introduced into Lake Superior, were first successfully stocked in the Great Lakes by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources in 1967 (MN DNR, 2000). Despite many attempts to introduce Atlantic Salmon, this species has not adapted well to the Great Lakes, and only Michigan continues to stock them (UW Sea Grant Institute, 1999). Minnesota state records for pink, coho, chinook, and Atlantic salmon are 4 pounds, 8 ounces; 10 pounds, 7 ounces; 33 pounds, 4 ounces; and 12 pounds, 13 ounces, respectively (MN DNR, 2000).