A spring male chinook Salmon. (Courtesy Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife)

Adult spring chinook salmon numbers at Bonneville Dam are a little more than 120,000, the third best in the last 10 years, an Idaho Department of Fish and Game official says.

But, wild fish numbers are “rather low,” according to officials.

“Keep in mind that the last 10 years contains some pretty bad returns,” Tim Copeland, program coordinator for wild salmon and steelhead monitoring studies, told the Capital Press.
Those numbers are pretty close to preseason forecasts for the basin as a whole, Copeland said.
“A potential bright spot is that the number of jacks this year has exceeded last year’s count, meaning we should get more adults in 2026 than we are seeing now,” he said. “These are good things.”
The spring chinook run from the ocean is pretty much over for the year, Copeland said. The summer run part of the cycle is beginning.

The run at Lower Granite Dam is progressing, but it’s not certain that last year’s numbers will be exceeded, Copeland said.
“The thing that troubles me is that the proportion of the run that is wild fish seems rather low, currently less than 12% based on the (Lower Granite) sampling,” he said. The 10-year average is about 18%.

“Given the numbers in hand, there will be fewer than 10,000 wild adults to spawn later this year,” he said.

Agencies, tribes and environmental groups value wild fish higher than hatchery-produced fish. About 80% of the region’s fish populations are hatchery fish. The goal is to recover more wild fish populations.

Since 2018, there have been several years of low production of wild smolts in a row, Copeland said.

“Consequently, even if ocean survival is good, it will take a few years to get the number of adults back to better seed the rearing habitat than done the last few years,” Copeland said.

Hatchery production has continued to produce similar numbers of smolts every year, so those fish will respond to better ocean conditions more quickly, he said.

“The picture in the Snake is still evolving but wild fish numbers seem depressed more than expected,” Copeland said.

FURTHER READING: https://capitalpress.com/2024/09/12/the-count-agencies-track-wild-hatchery-fish-in-columbia-snake-rivers/