July 10, 2024

Hi everyone, during the last open period of the Upper Salmon River Chinook fishery (July 4 – July 7), we saw a slight increase in angler effort, with approximately 1,552 angler hours targeting Chinook Salmon during the third week of the season. Additionally, we estimated that anglers harvested 28 hatchery adults and 49 hatchery jacks. Anglers also released one hatchery adult, two hatchery jacks, five adipose intact adults, and three adipose intact jacks. The average catch rate was 18 hours per salmon caught, and the harvest rate was 20 hours per salmon kept. Even though it was a holiday weekend, we did not observe much of an increase in effort, with only 224 hours of effort more than the previous week.   

RULES 

Nothing has changed since last week’s update regarding the fishery rules, but we are planning on continuing to include this paragraph in all upcoming reports to make it easier for anyone unaware of the rules to find the information.

The Upper Salmon River fishery is open 4 days a week (Thursday – Sunday), and it will reopen each Thursday until harvest share is reached, wild fish impacts are reached, or until August 10th, whichever comes first. The fishery is open from 100 yards upstream of the Valley Creek confluence to the posted boundary approximately 100 yards downstream of the weir and trap at the Sawtooth Fish Hatchery. Fishing hours are from 5:30am to 10:00 pm MDT. The daily limit is four (4) hatchery Chinook salmon, only two (2) of which may be adults (over 24 inches). For the full season rules, please click here.

RUN and HARVEST SHARE UPDATE

In last weeks’ update, I mentioned that we would be shifting our focus from fish counts at Bonneville Dam to what we are seeing (or have seen) crossing Lower Granite Dam. 

As of July 8th, 1,626 Sawtooth hatchery adult Chinook Salmon have crossed over Lower Granite Dam which is an increase of 81 from last week (table below).  As mentioned in last week’s report, we had a late push of PIT-tagged fish come over Bonneville Dam, and how they survived on their migration from Bonneville up to Lower Granite Dam would influence what our harvest share would end up being.  Sawtooth Hatchery adult salmon had been above average, but unfortunately, survival of those late-arriving fish has been lower – we did have one of the late arrivals cross Lower Granite on the 7/7 which helps, but the overall survival from Bonneville to Lower Granite came in at 73%. Using that most recent estimate, our harvest share is 296 hatchery adult salmon.