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How Was Your Opening Day? Talk of "Record Runs" is Fallacious by Richard Scully Lewiston Tribune, May 7, 2018

The April 26 Lewiston Tribune reported that the House passed Cathy McMorris Rodgers' bill to block court-ordered spill at lower Snake River dams. The purpose of the spill is to direct migrating salmon and steelhead juveniles (smolts) over the dam spillways and away from turbines.

This technique, in combination with new technology "removable spillway weirs," guides deep migrating smolts up and over the spillway quickly, thereby increasing smolt survival. When more smolts survive, there will be more salmon and steelhead to catch when they return as adults one or two years later.

McMorris Rodgers and other bill supporters, including Idaho's Raul Labrador, said that "the four Snake River dams already allow record salmon runs." McMorris Rodgers further stated that the "dams and fish can co-exist."

As a resident of the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley, I ask the thousands of area anglers: How was your steelhead season that just ended, when you couldn't keep steelhead on the Snake or Clearwater rivers until mid-October, and then were only allowed to keep steelhead that were smaller than 28 inches?

Did you feel like you were benefiting from the "record salmon runs" proclaimed by McMorris Rodgers?

How was your spring chinook fishing on the April 28 Clearwater River opening day when there was a grand total of 23 chinook above Lower Granite Dam?

Isn't it getting harder to accept political statements that you know from your own personal experiences are false?

Saying them over and over again does not make them true.