I was half bored/half excited about fall steelheading so I geeked out and downloaded some counts and used some pretty colors.
Interesting counts this year. Not an exact science by any means, but I think a good enough data point to show that upriver stocks are doing better than lower river stocks. Both hatchery and wild. Take a look.
To me, it looks like the dams that don't count after 10/31 are missing fish and the damns that don't count before 4/15 or 5/1 are missing fish. The clear example is PRD and WAN having less fish over than RIS.
There ARE small runs of winter fish in the basin as well as "springers" (summer fish so won't spawn for an entire year) that are headed for upriver tribs in April. PIT tagging has proven that. Most of those are in the Bonneville pool, but not all. There was a decent bump of wild fish over Bonneville in April that didn't get counted at several damns if they kept going.
So like I said, not an exact science.
In summary, not as many fish over Bonneville, but more fish going upriver. So less fish for Bonneville pool tribs like Wind, the Salmons, Hood and Klick. And this changes every day, but I've been tracking and the overall theme is fish are really moving upriver right now. On 9/13 there were 40k fish in the Bonneville pool. That's a different spreadsheet.
Now there are only 33,909. Obviously some go up the tribs, but on 9/13 there were only 13,989 above LGR...I just checked today and LGR shows 27k! So the Clearwater, GR & Salmon systems have twice as many fish today compared to just a week ago. Metalheads are on the move!
So while it's a better year than last in nearly all the basin, it's not all roses for the lower tribs. Have fun and please keep em wet.
Stacy
Interesting counts this year. Not an exact science by any means, but I think a good enough data point to show that upriver stocks are doing better than lower river stocks. Both hatchery and wild. Take a look.
To me, it looks like the dams that don't count after 10/31 are missing fish and the damns that don't count before 4/15 or 5/1 are missing fish. The clear example is PRD and WAN having less fish over than RIS.
There ARE small runs of winter fish in the basin as well as "springers" (summer fish so won't spawn for an entire year) that are headed for upriver tribs in April. PIT tagging has proven that. Most of those are in the Bonneville pool, but not all. There was a decent bump of wild fish over Bonneville in April that didn't get counted at several damns if they kept going.
So like I said, not an exact science.
In summary, not as many fish over Bonneville, but more fish going upriver. So less fish for Bonneville pool tribs like Wind, the Salmons, Hood and Klick. And this changes every day, but I've been tracking and the overall theme is fish are really moving upriver right now. On 9/13 there were 40k fish in the Bonneville pool. That's a different spreadsheet.
Now there are only 33,909. Obviously some go up the tribs, but on 9/13 there were only 13,989 above LGR...I just checked today and LGR shows 27k! So the Clearwater, GR & Salmon systems have twice as many fish today compared to just a week ago. Metalheads are on the move!
So while it's a better year than last in nearly all the basin, it's not all roses for the lower tribs. Have fun and please keep em wet.
Stacy