Hi everybody, this is Joe Dupont, with the Clearwater Region’s Weekly Chinook Update
Harvest Shares
The table below shows the number of adult spring Chinook Salmon that have passed over Lower Granite based on PIT tags (and their associated harvest shares) that are destined for the different fisheries in the Clearwater Region…not much different than I showed you last week.
Clearwater River Fishery
Chinook fisheries are still open upstream of Orofino Bridge (7-days a week) and in River Section 1 (4-days a week). Last week we estimated that 128 spring Chinook were harvested with most of them being caught in the upper South Fork Clearwater River and in River Section 5 around Kooskia Hatchery (see Harvest Results). Catch rates are still good around Kooskia hatchery (8 hrs/fish) and in the upper South Fork (11 hrs/fish). For those of you fishing the South Fork, be sure check around where Meadow Creek flows in. Based on our PIT tag estimates, over 500 fish are returning to this creek, so there may be some Chinook congregating in this area. I haven’t heard any reports on whether this is the case or not.
Based on our creel surveys, we still have 270 spring Chinook remaining in our harvest share. As such, the Mainstem Clearwater River upstream of Orofino Bridge, the Middle Fork Clearwater River, the South Fork Clearwater River, and the Lochsa River will remain open at least through this week. The next time we will look at the data will be next Tuesday, so no closures will occur before then. Don’t forget that for all these river reaches (except the South Fork) your can now harvest clipped or unclipped fish to take advantage of the summer Chinook salmon that will be passing through. In addition, section 1 of the Clearwater River will also be open Friday through Monday (June 24-27) to the harvest of clipped or unclipped Chinook. More details are provided below on the summer Chinook fishery.
Clearwater Summer Chinook
It seems, the most common question I get regarding the summer Chinook is “Where are they?” And as you might guess, the reason anglers are asking this question is because they are having a hard time catching them. Well, the answer is quite simple. There just are not near as many summer Chinook returning to the Clearwater basin as spring Chinook. We estimate that close to 12,000 spring Chinook will enter the Clearwater basin this year as compared to around 1,300 summer Chinook. This isn’t too surprising seeing we release about 10 times as many spring Chinook smolts as summer Chinook smolts. I put together the graph below to give you some feel for the difference in numbers and timing of the spring Chinook run versus summer Chinook run. As you can see, there are two major differences between these two returns. First, as I already mentioned, there are way more spring Chinook returning than summers. Second, the spring Chinook tend to migrated all at once while the summer Chinook migration is more spread out. Because of this, there is really no time period when a bunch of summer run Chinook will be migrating through the Clearwater that a person can target. This obviously makes it more difficult in you are trying to intercept fish as they migrate through. To have consistent success, you will need to find places where these fish congregate or spots and times when they migrate through confined areas. Right now our creel program estimates that anglers have harvested five summer Chinook, and they all came from the Lochsa River. Fishing in the Lochsa should only get better as more fish move into this river and congregate in certain areas. If you are wondering whether it is worth fishing in the pass through fisheries, I would say the run over Lower Granite Dam is a little over half way complete. This means there are more fish on the way. I’ll leave it up to you on whether it is worth it or not. As many people say, a slow day of fishing is better than a good of work.
Summer, if officially here. I hope you all are enjoying this nice weather. - Joe DuPont, Clearwater Region Fish Manager