Chum

Chum are the Salmonids you see most. Mid-sized, green-scaled, and armed with a frying pan each, they come ashore in the dozens during every Salmon Run wave and attack anything holding a Golden Egg. Individually they are easy to splat. Collectively they are the reason crews wipe.

In the life cycle

Chum are the adult stage between the swarming Smallfry and the heavyweight Cohock. In the Salmonid warrior culture described by the Sunken Scrolls, they are the standing army: the fish that answer the tide and defend the spawning grounds. They also serve the Boss Salmonids, appearing as escorts and, in some cases, as pilots or components of the bosses' machinery.

Behavior

Chum move in packs, target the nearest worker, and swing their pans on contact. They are drawn to Golden Eggs and to the basket where the crew deposits them, which means a careless team can find its collection point surrounded. They also drop Power Eggs when splatted, the lesser currency that Grizzco also pays for.

Character

Chum are the everyfish of the Salmonid world. The games use them to establish scale: one is nothing, a hundred is a crisis, and a tide of them is a reminder that the Salmonids are a people rather than a hazard. Splatoon 3's story, by making a Smallfry a companion, raised the question of whether Chum are individuals too. The scrolls suggest they are. Salmon Run does not give crews time to ask. Their frying pans, incidentally, are a joke the series never explains: an army of fish armed with the tool most often used to cook them, swung at the workers who came to steal their eggs.