Somewhere off the Oregon Coast may swim a rare and special salmon that some say is born through a quirk of nature, while others say it’s simply the product of imaginative minds.

It’s a hybrid that has some genetic and, supposedly, physical characteristics of both coho salmon and chinook salmon, two sub-species not normally known to interbreed.

Their believers call them "co-nucks," and unsuspecting anglers occasionally keep one of these salmon during chinook-only ocean angling seasons because they think they look like a legal chinook.

But police at the docks instead identify them as wild coho and cite the anglers for illegally killing a threatened species.

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A version of these salmon once were documented in a sophisticated genetics study, yet no state fish biologist, police officer or judge has said he’s seen a bonafide co-nuck. But Jim Welter says it’s definitely out there, and he’s hell-bent on proving it exists.

"I’ve probably seen a half-dozen of them," says Welter, a retired commercial fisherman and avid ocean angler in Brookings. "This isn’t something I dreamed up. They exist. It’s a fact, not a guess."

Welter is one of six Brookings anglers holding special state and federal permits this fall to kill up to 10 wild coho salmon suspected to be co-nucks in hopes of settling this hybrid issue after years of ill will.

The fish will be analyzed to see if they sport the genes of coho and chinook, thereby determining whether this cross- breeding salmon gets acknowledged by state agencies or banished to the myth-list between Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

"If they exist in the numbers that fishermen tell us, we should be able to produce one or 10," says Curt Melcher, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife salmon program manager who is overseeing the sampling.

"We’re aware there’s at least the potential for having hybridization," he says, "but I’m still a little skeptical."

So, too, are police who believe the co-nuck simply is the product of anglers trying to talk themselves out of expensive tickets.

"The only people who have seen these are the ones who profess their existence," says Lt. Steve Ross of the Oregon State Police’s Fish and Wildlife Division, which enforces ocean coho-angling closures.

"But I’d like to know one way or the other," Ross says. "I’m getting a little tired hearing year after year from people saying they got one, yet nobody’s kept one around long enough to have it analyzed."

But Welter believes the study will show that state officials have missed the boat on co-nucks and should stop punishing anglers for their ignorance.

"If the state’s (hatchery technicians) can’t tell the difference and the people at the dock can’t tell the difference, I don’t think it’s fair to write tickets," Welter says.

The co-nuck conundrum dates back to the early 1990s when coho fishing was banned off Southern Oregon and Northern California, leaving only chinook as the legal catch.

Chinook are the largest Pacific salmon and sport black lower gums, a flat tail and larger dark blotches on the back.

Coho, however, have a forked tail, a whitish gum line, smaller and rounder spots on the back and no spots on the lower half of their tail.

Welter insists that the co-nucks he’s seen primarily look like chinook, except they have slight forks in their tails and gum lines that are either white or fine shades of gray.

Occasionally, Welter says, one of these co-nucks would be taken to the dock and a check of the gum line would lead to a minimum $299 ticket for keeping a wild coho.

"For everything other than an absolutely black gum line," Welter claims, "they were writing tickets."

Most cases, however, appear to be anglers simply seeing a large coho and incorrectly tagging it as a chinook.

"Some guy gets a fish they think is a 20-pounder to the boat and of course nobody sees a 20-pound coho," says Russ Stauff, the ODFW’s Rogue watershed manager. "So they thump it on the head, and the next thing you know they got a dead coho in the boat."

But like all good mysteries, there is some solid evidence at the heart of the story.

A University of California at Davis study in the late 1980s documented juvenile chinook salmon — both hatchery and wild — in the Klamath River system that had some genes previously found only in coho.

The wild hybrid fish likely were bred when wild coho and chinook spawned in overlapping areas within Northern California’s Trinity River system when a new dam altered their spawning patterns.

More hybrids were created when Iron Gate Hatchery workers in 1987 mistakenly spawned coho with chinook, then released the fish.

Also in that study, two chinook with coho genes were found among 1,000 adult chinook sampled from commercial anglers in Northern California.

The study, however, makes no mention of the hybrids’ physical characteristics. While there were some shared genes, there were no shared features.

Those conclusions, however, are at the root of a series of coastal rumors over the co-nucks’ creation. Some believe the fish are used as a way to write more fishing tickets. Others have even speculated that the ODFW actively breeds co- nucks to keep ocean anglers from keeping them, thereby boosting carcass sales at places like Cole Rivers Hatchery.

"I’ve heard them all, too," says Melcher, the salmon manager. "I assure you, we’re not doing that."

To settle the issue, Melcher received state and federal permits allowing Welter and five other anglers to keep any suspected co-nuck they catch during legal seasons this fall.

Those fish, plus samples from illegally caught coho seized from anglers and some commercially caught chinook, will be genetically analyzed at an Oregon State University lab.

The test, which costs $4,600, would cover up to 96 fish. It has yet to be funded, but Melcher is looking for grants.

Ross says that, even if the co-nucks are proven true, anglers still won’t necessarily be able to keep them under current fishing rules that allow only chinook — and not co-nucks — in the Southern Oregon ocean catch.

Since receiving the permit two weeks ago, Welter and his fellow permitees have yet to catch a co-nuck suspect. Bad weather has kept them off the water, which may mean the search for the mysterious co-nuck will carry into next summer.

"They exist," Welter says. "We just picked one hell of a poor year to prove it."

Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com