Legacy Plate #4 - Perfect Couple

The download link to the high resolution version of this image is located at the bottom of this page.

The Perfect Steelhead Couple

Top Image: This mint-bright summer-run female steelhead from the Skeena River system in British Columba is the ideal vision of what devout anglers imagine when we think steelhead—sleek, fat, chrome, simply beautiful. Nearly a century after Steller saw his steelhead, Meredith Gairdner, a young graduate of the University of Edinburgh School of Medicine volunteered as a Hudson’s Bay Company surgeon and sailed to British Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River. One of his directives was to study the flora and fauna of the region including fsh. He, too, “discovered” steelhead. Thus, since 1836, Salmo gairdneri. For 200 years anyway.

Bottom Image: Completing the the perfect couple—a complementary male steelhead, coloring up and readying for the redds, also from a Skeena tributary. To continue the story of the steelhead’s classification, in 1989 the American Fisheries Society determined that, Salmo mykiss and S. gairdneri being the same critter, precedence in naming called for the earlier Russian to become the universal name of rainbow trout and, yes, its anadromous form, steelhead. While they were at it, the scientists said that morphological and genetic studies determined that S. mykiss is evolutionarily closer to Pacific species of salmon than to the Salmo brown trout and Atlantic salmon. Hence, welcome mykiss to the Oncorhynchus clan—from the Greek onkos (“hook”) and rynchos (“nose”) for the severe kype that coho and the others develop before spawning. Most male or “buck” steelhead spawn rigorously and repeatedly to their deaths.

Having given you the technical classification details, we think this image of a buck and hen, from the Skeena River system in British Columba represent some of the best looking steelhead in the world and together make “The Perfect Couple”. I have this framed on my wall and hope you enjoy it as well. The two images are from Flies For Atlantic Salmon & Steelhead

Download Information: Legacy Plate #4 is a high-resolution archival plate. Each plate includes a white border and is suitable for high-quality printing and framing. Dimensions: 12” (width) x 16” (height) at 300 DPI. Click the button below to automatically download the high-resolution image.