It appears to this writer that there is a little confusion
about fish.

Cold water fish;  some Tuna and Mackerel are caught in 80
deg. F water.

It is my experience that unless you have the Latin name of a
fish you will  usually be easily looking at the wrong fish.

There must be a source authority of oiliness,  quantity and
quality that we can use as a base as it seems  we have
considerable difference of opinion here and it is really not
a matter of opinion,  but one that lends itself to
scientific analysis.

Apparently fish have been around longer than primates.   Did
Paleo  People eat fish?   In 1943 I stood in icy water and
using a hand net dipped up "Smelt"  otherwise known as
candlefish because dried they burned very nicely. The
"license" was fifty cents and the limit was fifty pounds.
These fish came into the river in enormous numbers in March.
Commercial fisherman dipped up twenty pounds at a dip.  The
Market name is Columbia River Smelt.  They are delicious.

When I was a child my father flipped Salmon out of Dee River
with a pitchfork,  then that became illegal, but he was
still allowed to kick them out with his foot.  Then after
that became illegal he could catch the Salmon that came
ashore on a wave having missed the river.   Later in 1949
residents of Garibaldi OR told me that in the 1920's when
Salmon ran up the Miami river it looked like you caould walk
across the river on their backs.  Then after they spawned
and died the carcasses were piled up ten feet deep on the
river banks.

When Lewis and Clark arrived in Idaho they found the Natives
living on fish that they caught in mechanical traps made of
sticks and twine.  ( TODAY  In Oregon's Tilamook Bay you
colud  still live year around on just clams dug by hand in
loose gravel.)

I have heard that the Native Peoples living around Puget
Sound enjoyed such a comparitvely  easy soft  life and  that
when the fiercer Natives from more rigoures areas where one
had to work harder  frequently raided these  villages their
primary defense was to run and hide in the woods.

It is hard for us today to understand the abundance of fish
and game in some areas as its's habitat has been destroyed,
and only a very small fraction remains.

Based on the above my conclusion is that primitives living
near the seashore had all the seafood they could possibly
eat.  And based on what we know of American Natives and
other Primitives,  the smart ones lived very well indeed.
And that a great deal of confusion exists today because
speculation is often used  in an area where huge amounts of
empirical data are  available in the local library.

Best Regards,

Lorenzo