Thanks again for your interest in Idaho’s Chinook fisheries and the upper Salmon River.
I waited a few days longer than normal since providing another update on the upper Salmon River Chinook return, and I’m sure glad I did. Had I posted this last Thursday (6/5) on my normal weekly timing, I would have said our chances of having a Chinook salmon fishery in the upper Salmon River were dwindling rapidly and we likely would not have been proposing a fishery, since our harvest share has hovering around 100 fish and dropping by the day. In the week following my last update (5/29 through 6/5), we observed only one Sawtooth PIT tag at Bonneville Dam on 5/30 and then went six days without seeing another Sawtooth tag.
What a difference a few days and a handful of PIT tags can make! We observed 9 more Sawtooth PIT tags over this past weekend (6/6-6/8), which is 1/3rd of the total PIT tags observed (27) for the Sawtooth return this year. This tells us the run is a little bit later than normal, and while it’s still a bit below the preseason forecast (~2,400 vs ~3,000), we are forecasting a harvestable surplus. Assuming we see a few more PIT tags and we have average conversion (survival) on their migration up through the Columbia and lower Snake River, we should have a harvest share of around 400 adult Sawtooth Chinook. I’ll keep you posted over the coming weeks as that number changes as we monitor upstream survival and any additional PIT tags that cross Bonneville.
IDFG will be proposing a fishery in the upper Salmon River at the end of this week. The IDFG Commission will meet on Friday (6/13) to review and discuss the proposal, which would be to open the Salmon River ~100 yards above Valley Creek, upstream to the posted boundary ~100 yards downstream of the Sawtooth Hatchery weir. The proposed fishery would open on June 19thth and run 7 days per week. The proposed bag limits would be 4 Chinook, only 2 of which may be adults.
If the season is approved by the Commission, as usual, we will be monitoring the fishery closely. As we’ve seen in the past, how long these fisheries last in the upper Salmon can depend on a variety of things, such as the timing of when the fish arrive, stream flows and temperature, and of course angler effort.
Thanks, and stay tuned for another update next week after the Commission meeting.
by Greg Schoby | Idaho Fish and Game
