The pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) is a cold-water sport fish found in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and their tributaries. Pink salmon typically range between 15 and 24 inches and can vary a bit in appearance. When residing in Lake Erie and Ontario, pink salmon have silver bodies with slate gray heads and backs. When pink salmon enter tributaries to spawn, their coloration changes, and they usually have a dark green color above the lateral line, becoming lighter to almost silver at the belly. Coloration can vary widely.

One identifier of a pink salmon in tributaries is large areas of pale green on the sides of the fish that almost make it appear as if the fish is covered with algae. This occurs in both females and males. No other salmon species in western New York has the algae-green coloration that pink salmon do. Male pink salmon are very easy to identify during the run as they have large, humped backs that are hard to mistake.

Pink salmon are actually very rare in western New York. Catches of pink salmon are very hard to come by as of the mid 2000s. However, the summer and fall of 2016 are an interesting exception. During late summer, fisherman trolling for walleye and lake trout in Lake Erie’s western basin began picking up pink salmon much more frequently than usual. The occurrence of pink salmon in Lake Erie’s western basin preempted the best pink salmon run in recent memory. Pink salmon were caught occasionally in late September through October 2016 by fisherman targeting steelhead on Lake Erie tributaries, particularly on Cattaraugus and 18 Mile Creeks.