Memorable Salmon Seasons End

Except on the Boise River, the 2002 chinook salmon seasons came to an end August 5. Salmon anglers interviewed on the South Fork of the Salmon River in the last few days of that seasonÑfishing there ended July 18Ñwere excited about the opportunity this summer offered to make family memories. A full-length version of this article with photographs will be available in late August in the Fish and Game online publication Incredible Idaho which is linked on the department web page at www2.state.id.us/fishgame home page. Excerpts follow: Fourteen-year-old Madeleine Cannamela grips her fishing pole and braces herself against a rock as a salmon on the other end of the line threatens to pull her in. "Dad get him," she yells as her father jumps into the water, net in hand. "Roll him over" he calls back. "I am rolling!" Dave Cannamela slips the net under the salmon and the tug-of-warbetween this fish and his daughter ends. But the sheer excitement of catching a salmon lingers in the air. "It was fun. It was hard. I thought it was going to pull me off the rock," says Madeleine. "Salmon fishing with my daughter means everything to me," Dave says. "It's the most fun you can ever have. This is something Madeleine and I do together. It's just fantastic. This year she hooked and landed her first fish!" Upstream from the Cannamelas, three generations of the Hansen family gather around a fishing hole on the South Fork. "One of the reasons I love salmon fishing so much is because it's a family activity," says Lane Hansen, from Arco. "The weather's nice, scenery's beautiful and families can go on vacation and enjoy that." Salmon fishing in the Hansen family is a time-honored tradition. Lane Hansen's father first taught him to fish for salmon decades ago when there were salmon in the East Fork of the Salmon River. Lane taught his own sons and daughters to fish on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. Salmon fishing on the Middle Fork was closed in 1979. Now, he helps teach his grandchildren to fish for salmon on the South Fork of the Salmon River. "My sons have gone with me many years now, and now my grandsons have started," says Lane Hansen. "Get on the river bank, see them with a fish and their eyes are big and wide and they are excited. It just totally overwhelms me sometimes. I almost can't speak." The next generation of anglers is picking up what older anglers already know. Idaho's chinook salmon are magnificent fish. "They go from salt water to fresh water, so that's pretty amazing," says Madeleine. "Then you see the streams they are coming up. That's even more amazing. They come from there to here in two weeks, that's wild!". This salmon fishing season, anglers took about 19,200 hatchery chinook salmon throughout Idaho. The economic benefit to small towns and Idaho's rural economy reaches tens of millions of dollars. Lane Hansen says that's reason enough to restore Idaho's salmon runs. But in his heart, salmon need to be restored for Idaho's families. "Old guys like me have caught lots of fish and we've had our fun, so we still go and take advantage of it when we have a fishery. But the fighting and working towards trying to help the fish, that is for our grandkids. And that's what it's all about." "It's just very right that we are able to go fish for them and share," says Dave Cannamela. "You had the Hansens up there and there are three generations up there, granddad, kid, grandkids. And it's just very right that they are able to share that as a family. Very right that we can catch and harvest some fish." The Idaho Department of Fish and Game expects there will be a limited salmon fishery in Idaho again next summer. However, after 2003, Idahoans may have to hang up their salmon fishing rods once again.