[2] Puget Sound Steelhead Added To ESA List

Columbia Basin harvest managers said the spring chinook run is tracking pretty close to their pre-season estimate of 78,500 fish, which would be the third lowest return of the past 10 years. On May 21, they reiterated their belief, even though dam counts were dropping to 500 or fewer fish per day. The University of Washington's inseason forecaster was more pessimistic. On May 21, it pegged the spring run at Bonneville to be only about 70,000--down from its own pre-season estimate of 83,000. It figured the spring run was about 86 percent history.

But help may be on the way.

Jack counts, which usually play a large role in signaling the size of the following year's run, are running hot and heavy.

More than 14,000 jacks had been counted at Bonneville Dam by May 23--nearly three times the 10-year average--with little sign of letting up. If this stays on track, 2007 could be the second largest jack count since 1977, when dam counters first started separating them from adults.

Since jacks mature a year before most of the run, they are generally a sign of good things to come next year. But the ultimate run size for 2008 will depend on other factors besides jacks, such as the number of three-year old chinook expected to come back next year. That's not likely to be very many, since they went to sea in 2005 when ocean conditions off the mouth of the Columbia River were rotten.

However, the high jack numbers show that ocean conditions have improved considerably from two years ago.

But, it's still too early to make any bets on the size of next year's run, Two weeks ago, some biologists suggested that next year's spring run might be anywhere from 150,000 to 200,000 fish. If the jacks keep on coming, the smart money may move up toward the 200K mark.

And now beyond that. The 14,000 jacks that showed up in 2001 presaged a 2002 return of 270,000 chinook. Only twice in the past 10 years--in 2001 and 2002--has the spring run at Bonneville Dam surpassed 200,000 springers, when totals of 392,000 and 270,000 chinook were counted, respectively. The 2001 spring return was a modern record--the most counted since Bonneville Dam was completed in 1938. -B. R.

The following links were mentioned in this story:

Columbia River DART, Inseason Forecasts

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