SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A Yellowknife man who was fishing for ciscoes at Tartan Rapids last Tuesday accidentally caught something totally unexpected.

Trevor Murdoch holds the salmon he discovered while fishing at Tartan Rapids on Oct. 18. - photo courtesy of Trevor Murdoch

Trevor Murdoch was pulling in his net when he noticed a fish that was larger than usual among the bunch.

"I had three or four ciscoes in the net and there was a salmon," Murdoch said. "The fish actually had a cisco in its mouth."

Murdoch believes the fish is a chum salmon - a species he'd seen before in books.

It weighs eight pounds and stretches 29 inches long, he said.

According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, chum salmon are found in the Pacific Rim, including in Arctic waters.

Murdoch said he believes it came all the way from the Arctic Ocean and that it looked "very sick" by the time it ended up in his net.

"In the fall they spawn, or they try and spawn," Murdoch said of the fish. "Once the salmon spawn, they die."

He called the local Department of Fisheries and Oceans as well as Environment and Natural Resources to ask what to do with the fish, he said.

The Fisheries Act prohibits anyone from catching fish other than ciscoes and suckers using a dip net. Anything else must be turned back right away.

Murdoch said Fisheries told him to send them the fish so it could be used for scientific purposes.

"They said they'd like to see it," Murdoch said. "It's going to be sent to Winnipeg. There's a study group studying fish in the Mackenzie River."

Karen Dunmall, a PhD student at the University of Manitoba, is part of the group that will be taking in Murdoch's fish for their Arctic salmon study.

She and her team work in partnership with Fisheries and Oceans to run a community monitoring program where people can trade in their salmon for gift-card rewards. The study group then uses the fish to track the number of salmon in the Arctic, where they're coming from and whether they're spawning successfully.

"A salmon in the Yellowknife River is really interesting," Dunmall said, explaining she's never heard of one being caught around the area before.

But chum salmon are not uncommon to the Northwest Territories.

Dunmall said her study group has received more than 350 chum salmon from the territory through the community trading program this year.

The chum salmon's numbers tend to fluctuate from year to year, she said, with less than 50 being turned in during other years.

"It's important for people to understand they are harvested in the Mackenzie River system every year," she said.

Murdoch still has the fish - along with the ciscoe that was caught in its mouth - and is waiting for the group from Winnipeg to deliver a special shipping box so he can send it to them for their study.

Although he's been fishing since he was about five-years old, he said he's never seen a chum salmon around Yellowknife before.

"I knew it wasn't anything from around here. It wasn't a pike or a whitefish or anything normal to the area," he said. "The chance of just randomly coming across a salmon in the Yellowknife River is pretty rare."

Yellowknifer was unable to reach a spokesperson from Fisheries and Oceans who could provide a comment by press time.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.