For the week of July 16 - 22, 2003

Returning chinook runs are streaming into Idaho

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"It’s a good run, but it’s not up there in the records. 2001 was a recent record, and we’re below that. It’s certainly above the ten-year average in the ’90s, though."

— SHARON KIEFER, Idaho Department of Fish and Game anadromous fisheries coordinator

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By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

Amidst the political fervor created by a May court ruling that declared the U.S. government’s Northwest salmon recovery blueprint insufficient, spring and summer chinook salmon are slowly swimming upstream toward their native spawning beds in relatively respectable numbers, especially in Idaho.

So far this year, 85,758 chinook have passed Lower Granite Dam on the lower Snake River. Lower Granite is the last of eight dams the fish must circumvent on their long migration from the Pacific Ocean to Idaho.

This year’s chinook migration is the third most numerous run since at least 1979 and continues a three-year streak of higher-than-average returns. Last year, more than 97,000 chinook crossed Lower Granite. In 2001, 185,693 chinook returned.

"It’s a good run, but it’s not up there in the records. 2001 was a recent record, and we’re below that," said Sharon Kiefer, Idaho Department of Fish and Game anadromous fisheries coordinator. "It’s certainly above the ten-year average in the 90s, though."

In the 1990s, the largest chinook run contained about 30,000 fish. In 1995, only 1,797 returned.

Of this year’s returning chinook salmon, 40 to 44 percent are estimated to be wild, non-hatchery-raised fish.

This year’s healthy return helped Idaho anglers enjoy a time-honored Fourth of July weekend tradition, and stretches of the South Fork of the Salmon, Clearwater and Lochsa rivers were chock full of anglers.

Along the South Fork Salmon over the holiday weekend, tribal anglers waited patiently, spears in hand, for the passing shadow of a massive salmon. At a remote two-tiered waterfall, giant fish lunged from a crystal-clear pool and into the cascade’s froth.

According to Fish and Game, chinook began turning up in significant numbers in the South Fork of the Salmon a few days before the Fourth.

Just prior to the holiday, salmon anglers on the Lower Clearwater River and the North Fork of the Clearwater were catching fish at a rate of between three and five hours per fish.

Kiefer said this year’s good returns could primarily be attributed to improving conditions in the Pacific Ocean.

"We’ve had a regime shift in the ocean that has led to more average conditions," she said. That means an improvement in water temperature, food resources and ocean currents, to name a few of the variables.

Snake River Basin Chinook salmon were listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1992, a year after the system’s sockeye salmon were listed as endangered, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Chinook are the largest of the five Pacific salmon species. After living in the ocean one to three years, Snake River chinook that return to spawn in Idaho range between 20 and 50 inches in length and weigh up to 30 pounds.

When the smolts are about 3 months old, they travel downstream into an estuary where they adapt to the salt water they will encounter when they reach the ocean. It’s a journey that usually takes about one year.

Chinook spawn from May to January in deep, fast-moving rivers with gravel beds. Females deposit 3,000 to 4,000 eggs and will travel up to 2,000 miles to spawn at the sites of their birth.

Chinook spawning beds, called redds, in the upper Salmon River near Stanley are roughly 900 miles from the Pacific.

 

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