Fish wheel salmon species Chinook, Chum, Coho, Sockeye, and Pink) and other anadromous species of fish, has given fish wheels their second name as "salmon" wheels. Although salmon were prioritized by commercial fishers and Indigenous peoples (albeit for different reasons,) other fish such as steelhead trout ("Oncorhynchus mykiss"), ooligan ("Thaleichthys pacificus"), and lamprey ("Lampetra tridentata") were also considered valuable catch. While the fish wheel is best known for its presence on the Northwestern coast of North America, there is debate whether the technology arrived via Asian migrants who had come to labor in the gold fields, by Scottish and Russian migrants, or
Kokanee salmon of landlocked sockeye has occurred more than once with different kokanee populations, showing genetic differences between populations. Most evidence points to events that land-locked the lake-type sockeye (which spawns in streams and lakes, rather than tributaries like the sea-type sockeye, but is still anadromous and spends most of its adult life out at sea), which evolved into the non-anadromous form. Genetic evidence from kokanee in the Fraser River drainage and Columbia River drainage shows that ancestors of the kokanee came from the lake-type sockeye. The data also suggests that the kokanee may have evolved back into a lake-type anadromous form