Even Year Pinks?
- Thread starter Sam Roffe
- Start date
Chris Johnson
Steelhead
I've seen them in the Skagit on even years. A few years ago I was up above Marblemount and saw the tail portion of a pink laying in the shallows.
It doesn’t seem likely, there have been very small runs consistently for a long time. It’s also notable that the even year pinks on the snohomish are very small fish. I have been up there where they spawn a few times and seen the average size at maybe a pound and a half. Unexpected compared to even year pinks spawning in the same place being 2 to 3 times as big.
Really though, who knows what will happen. Things have changed out in the ocean in ways we don't really understand. Relationships and trends that used to correlate no longer do. Nobody expected the Puget Sound pinks to balloon to the multi millions but they did, and I don't think anyone has pinned a reason for that.
Yes, things are certainly weird. Sockeye have also been going crazy - returns double the forecast in the Columbia, one of the lowest ever returns to Lake Washington. But if I was to hazard a wild guess at what controls the puget sound even year pink population, I would say that it’s predation, rather than ocean conditions. There simply are not enough fry produced to overwhelm the predator population like the odd year runs do. A few make it through, by staying in marginal habitat, and thus the runs stay small, with small fish. But that’s no more than idle speculation.
I wonder if the PS even year pinks have a more frequent PS "resident" life history.
HauntedByWaters
Life of the Party
I have only seen even year pinks in the river doing spawners surveys. I have never caught one. They do seem extremely rare. I have seen them on the Nooksack and Skagit systems.
Were they also extra small like @Chucker 's observation on the Snohomish system? (I'm assuming on the Sky but there might be some on the Snoqualmie, why not)
HauntedByWaters
Life of the Party
I haven’t seen enough to confidently claim an average size. I’d put them in the 2lbs range so pretty typical for a humpy in my experience.
Interesting. The estuary pinks down here that I've been catching the last couple runs have been a lot bigger than that on average. There was that one run some years back where they were real small, and the coho were, too. 2017?
The even-year pinks are pretty interesting, while I have seen them in the Skagit, Stillaguamish and Snohomish basin they typically are most common in the Snohomish. Genetically those even-year fish are much different than the odd-year fish. Behaviorally they are also much different. They return and spawn much earlier (roughly 6 weeks) than the odd year fish thus their smaller size. That early timing is much the same as those early Nooksack pinks which may explain their similar size.
In the Snohomish much of the spawning of those even year pinks is in the Snohomish itself with the highest concentration at the top of tide water. During the late 1970s and early 1980s there consistently were 100 to 200 spawners, during the late 1980s the numbers increased to roughly 1,000 and in the early/mid 1990s their escapement was 1,640 to3,7434 pinks at which point their numbers increased significantly (6,000 in 1998, 12,000 in 2000, 44,000 in 2002 and 139,758 in 2004). Unfortunately, their numbers fell sharply in 2006 to 26,000 and 350 in 2008 and have remained at 50 or fewer spawners since then.
One theory is that the high abundance of odd year fish (especially in recent years) tend to crop the key zooplankton numbers down to a point that their abundance is limited that next year. Those Puget Sound conditions that has been favorable for those odd-year pinks have been limiting both the even -ear pinks as north sound chums.
Old reports show that even once in a while there has been upswings in those even-year fish, the 1930's and 1950s on the Skagit for example. Maybe we are starting to see one of those rare periods even-year pinks. While resident pinks were fairly common in Puget Sound (especially MA 11) into the mid-1950s they were odd-year fish with normal river entry and spawn timing> In 1955 the Department seined up some pinks in the Tacoma area during July with the only 2 recoveries coming during spawning surveys on the Stillaguamish.
Curt
In the Snohomish much of the spawning of those even year pinks is in the Snohomish itself with the highest concentration at the top of tide water. During the late 1970s and early 1980s there consistently were 100 to 200 spawners, during the late 1980s the numbers increased to roughly 1,000 and in the early/mid 1990s their escapement was 1,640 to3,7434 pinks at which point their numbers increased significantly (6,000 in 1998, 12,000 in 2000, 44,000 in 2002 and 139,758 in 2004). Unfortunately, their numbers fell sharply in 2006 to 26,000 and 350 in 2008 and have remained at 50 or fewer spawners since then.
One theory is that the high abundance of odd year fish (especially in recent years) tend to crop the key zooplankton numbers down to a point that their abundance is limited that next year. Those Puget Sound conditions that has been favorable for those odd-year pinks have been limiting both the even -ear pinks as north sound chums.
Old reports show that even once in a while there has been upswings in those even-year fish, the 1930's and 1950s on the Skagit for example. Maybe we are starting to see one of those rare periods even-year pinks. While resident pinks were fairly common in Puget Sound (especially MA 11) into the mid-1950s they were odd-year fish with normal river entry and spawn timing> In 1955 the Department seined up some pinks in the Tacoma area during July with the only 2 recoveries coming during spawning surveys on the Stillaguamish.
Curt