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Salmon Slow to Make an Appearance by Jeff Yanke Wallowa County Chieftain, May 31, 2017

We've been carefully monitoring the Chinook salmon runs and here's the latest information.

Daily counts at Bonneville remained low (1,000-2,000 per day) until last Saturday, but more than 16,000 salmon crossed Bonneville between Saturday and Monday. To date there has been 57,000 Chinook salmon counted at Bonneville Dam, which is 41 percent of the 10-year average.

Unfortunately we did not see more detections of fish bound for Wallowa County with the large push of fish at Bonneville. As of May 23, we have only observed six hatchery PIT tag detections for the Lookingglass, Lostine and Imnaha River stocks.

We have normally seen the entire Lookingglass run by now, and are beginning to observe the early portion of the Lostine and Imnaha run.

There have been several significant fishery actions in the Columbia and Snake River since my last update. After the salmon run forecast was downgraded, the Columbia River fishery was closed.

Washington closed its Snake River fishery below Little Goose dam last week. Idaho Fish and Game will close the Lower Salmon, Little Salmon and Clearwater River fisheries at the end of fishing hours May 24 out of concern for their ability to collect brood stock for future hatchery releases.

The only fishery that remains open in the Snake River is below Hells Canyon Dam. The trap below the dam was damaged with high spring flows, and we will not be able to collect broodstock this year.

Instead, we will collect these fish at the Rapid River hatchery in Idaho. So the few fish that do return to the dam will be available for anglers to harvest.

We will continue to monitor the size of this recent push of fish over Bonneville this week and hope more Northeast Oregon fish are detected.

In addition, we'll begin to make plans locally that ensure our ability to collect our broodstock goals at each location.