Chum salmon are bad-looking dudes. They're battered and tattered when most fishermen see them, because they start "breaking down" as soon as they're in fresh water. They spawn just a few miles inland wherever they are found, but if you can get at them near tidewater, they are a noble fly rod quarry. Recognizing a fresh or saltwater chum is not difficult. They are the only pacific salmon that don't have spots on their backs. They have black edges on all their fins except the dorsal fin. In the ocean, a chum salmon will have an overall silver color, and faintly green back. Once in freshwater, a chum salmon's appearance changes dramatically. They look like a garish Christmas wrap, with green and red vertical stripes, and pronounced canine teeth that earned them the nickname "dog salmon." (It is also said that the term dog salmon refers to the native-Alaskan practice of feeding the poor table fare to the sled teams.) A 20-pound chum is a trophy on a fly rod, most specimens will be 8-12 pounds. At every size, they fight with the aggressive strength that belies their sometimes tattered appearance. At certain destinations, they will attack a dry fly (pink, skated dry flies work the best) and sunken wet flies will work almost anywhere. Chum salmon-- either in the salt, or fresh from the ocean--are tough adversaries on a fly rod. In Alaska, chum salmon enter the river as early as July, but further south, they are usually fall spawners. die-hard chum anglers often must endure wet, cold weather, and remote locales. Some streams don't see chums until November or even December. That's one of those "separate the sheep from the goats" things that Nature throws in for the chum's protected future.