During March & April each year Sockeye Salmon head up the many rivers & streams in the Mackenzie Basin on their spawning run. The Mackenzie Basin is the only place in the Southern Hemisphere where you'll see this spectacle. Monitoring over the last few years has put the numbers between 40,000 & 70,000.
While on their spawning run it is illegal to catch, net or spear the fish, or even walk in the river bed and trample their nests (redds). Males are dark reddish/orange & the females have a blue tinge. Once the salmon have spawned they die & the river beds become littered with dead & dying fish. A sad sight but that's nature.
These are not the Chinook (King) salmon that most people are familiar with and are farmed in the canals, Sockeye are quite small in comparison.