COLUMBIA ESTUARY — The female chum salmon doesn’t look good. It’s ragged, heavy with eggs, flopping its way up Stewart Creek in Clatskanie, Ore., on an early December day, searching for somewhere to spawn before it dies.

Then a large coho noses aggressively past it. The chum spins a little and hangs behind while the coho continues splashing up the creek.

Valuable but still lower-priced than other salmon species when it’s in the ocean, a chum is pretty much despised when it’s back in freshwater. Its lean, white — not “salmon-colored” — flesh quickly turning soft, chum are the “don’t get no respect” Rodney Dangerfields of the salmon world. They are literally underdogs, claiming “dog salmon” as one of their nicknames.

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