The Salmon River smolt trap is a scoop trap that is approximately 50-feet long. Scoop traps are ideal when there is significant river flow, such as on the Salmon River, to push fishes into the trap.
The stationary trap scoops fishes out of the moving water. Fishes enter the trap. Then, an underwater metal incline plane belt and the river current guide them to a livewell. A paddlewheel drives the rotating belt that also helps keep the trap free of small debris. Solar panels supply power for the electronic sampling equipment.
Fish are netted, sampled, some are PIT-tagged, and all are returned to the river to continue their downstream migration to the Pacific Ocean.
This trap operates from early March until late May each year. It has been at its current location near White Bird, Idaho since 1995. It was located downriver, near White Bird Creek, from 1983-1994.
Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Fish Passage Center cooperatively operate this fish trap as a key component of the Smolt Monitoring Program and the Comparative Survival Study. More information about these important wild salmon and steelhead trout projects is available at https://www.fpc.org/fpc_homepage.php
To read about some interesting data from the Salmon River scoop trap, see our previous blog Rapid River Hatchery Chinook and natural Origin Chinook: The Same but Different
For more information on Idaho’s wild salmon and steelhead click here.