Hi Everybody. It is time for the weekly spring Chinook Salmon update for the fisheries in the Clearwater River Basin and in the lower Salmon and Little Salmon rivers (Rapid River Run) (5/28/19).
Run Update
The runs of spring Chinook Salmon over Bonneville Dam that are destined for the Clearwater River and Rapid River are pretty much complete. As such, we pretty much know what we are going to get. The only uncertainty is knowing just how many will make it from Bonneville Dam to Idaho. Right now we are assuming about 70% will make it Idaho (about average). With this understanding, we have updated our run size and harvest share table for the Clearwater and Rapid River run fisheries (using data through 5/27/19). For the Clearwater River basin run, it still looks bleak as we are projecting we will be 423 fish short of meeting brood needs. For the Rapid River run, we are forecasting a harvest share of 1,150 fish.
One thing I want to remind everybody of is that these run estimates and harvest shares are based on PIT tagged fish that have been detected passing the dams. As many of you are aware, PIT tag estimates usually underestimate the actual run size. That is because sometimes PIT tags fall out of fish and other times those fish that were PIT tagged don’t survive as well as those fish that were not PIT tagged. In addition, the degree that PIT tagged fish represent the actual run size varies from year to year. In some years, we have seen PIT tagged fish represent over 80% of the actual run size and in others we have seen them represent only 40% of the run size. Fortunately, we have a way to correct for this, and that is by using genetic data collected from fish trapped at Lower Granite Dam. With this data, we can calculate a more accurate run size. The reason I am telling you this is because we will use this genetic data to adjust our run estimates for the different release sites, and that can change harvest shares (up or down). This genetic data is currently being analyzed, and we should have more accurate run estimates and harvest shares for you in about a week. If you were wondering, it is highly unlikely the data will show that enough fish are returning to the Clearwater River basin to have a fishery.
Clearwater River Run Fishery
As most of you are aware, the fishery for spring Chinook Salmon returning to the Clearwater River basin was closed for the year last week. A few fish are starting to show up at the hatcheries, and from here on out, we will be making efforts to collect as many brood stock as possible.
Rapid River Run Fishery
We finally observed the first harvest of a spring Chinook Salmon in Idaho for the year. In fact, we estimated that anglers caught 129 adult fish last week when fishing the lower Salmon and Little Salmon rivers. Most of the fish were harvested in River Section 1 (Rice Creek Bridge to Hammer Creek boat ramp). For more information on where the fish were harvested, see the table below. You can also use this table to get a feel for how long the fishery will remain open by looking at the “Harvest Share Remaining” column. No fish were observed being harvested in the Little Salmon River. Typically, we try to allow 40-50% of the harvest to occur in the Little Salmon River.
For the most part, fishing effort was fairly light last week (the fishery is open Thursday through Sunday), but I suspect it will pick up considerably as word spreads that fish are being caught. With little competition, catch rates were decent (15 hrs/fish) in River Section 1, but it got more difficult as you progressed upstream. Right now flows are at about 37,000 cfs in the Salmon River, but they are supposed to gradually increase and exceed 50,000 cfs by Friday. These increasing flows could effect fishing some, especially if the water gets dirty, but for the most part fishing conditions should be decent for most of the four days that will be open this week. Flows in the Little Salmon are supposed to remain relatively stable for the week, and as such, we should see some salmon harvested there this week. As a reminder, with the low harvest share we have for the Rapid River run, do not expect this fishery to remain open very long.
That’s it for today. Good luck fishing.