One Sockeye Returns As Thousands Travel Out 102,000 Smolts Were Planted In 1995 For Trip To Pacific Ocean

Only one endangered sockeye salmon has made it back to Redfish Lake in central Idaho, but state Fish and Game biologists are optimistic about the record 102,000 planted in 1995 for this year’s trip to the ocean.

An 18-inch female salmon arrived at the Redfish Lake fish trap on Thursday after swimming 900 miles. Biologists will take the travel-worn fish to the Eagle Fish Hatchery near Boise to join 20 captive-reared male and female sockeye.

“Like all animals, sockeye give off pheromones, the breakdown products of sex hormones,” said Eagle manager Keith Johnson. “Putting this wild fish in with broodstock adults should help bring her into spawning condition.”

Half of her 3,000 eggs will be used for captive broodstock to help the dwindling run. The remaining progeny will be placed in Redfish and allowed to move downstream.

“This returning fish is a bit of a surprise, considering how few smolts we had in 1994,” Johnson said. Biologists hope two sockeyes counted at Lower Granite Dam on the lower Snake River will reach their spawning grounds.

But the fish headed seaward this year has the agency optimistic.

“We had 30,000 out-migrants this spring,” biologist Paul Kline said. “We have to go back to the 1950s to find numbers in that range.

“Checking up on these fish at Lower Granite Dam, I am estimating that just about 16,000 of the 30,000 successfully passed this checkpoint,” he said.

Factors such as eight hydroelectric dams combine to kill all but a slight remnant of the runs. But Kline hazarded a guess that at least 30 adults could return to the Stanley Basin two summers ahead.