Sockeye salmon pass Granite dam

STANLEY, Idaho – For the first time in years, Idahoans have a good opportunity to see the state’s most endangered fish alive.

So far, 63 sockeye salmon have made the nearly 900-mile trip from the Pacific Ocean, through eight dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers and finally to the Sawtooth Valley.

Every morning at 9 a.m., the Idaho Department of Fish and Game empties its trap at the Sawtooth Hatchery, less than 6 miles south of Stanley, giving the public a chance to see the salmon returning in numbers not seen for decades.

The fish swim into traps set on Redfish Lake Creek and at the Sawtooth Hatchery. Only the hatchery trap on state Highway 75 between Stanley and Ketchum is open to the public.

Fish and Game officials are hoping that up to half of the sockeye counted at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River will make the 462-mile trip from the dam to the Idaho lakes. They expect the number of returning sockeye to peak later this week through early next week.

“We’ll get 40 fish a day at the peak,” said Mike Peterson, a Fish and Game sockeye biologist.

More than 850 salmon have passed Lower Granite, the last dam that returning fish have to contend with on their way to Redfish, Petit and Alturas lakes in the Sawtooth Valley, where many of these salmon were hatched in 2006.

Historically, 75 percent of the sockeye counted at Lower Granite have not survived the last leg of their journey. But Dan Baker, manager of the Eagle Hatchery, said the heavy snowpack this year makes him optimistic.

“This is the coolest the water has been in 10 years,” Baker said.

The sockeye are loaded into a water tank on a truck and carried to the Eagle Hatchery daily. There, biologists will test them and decide whether they will be returned to spawn naturally in Redfish Lake in September or be spawned artificially in the hatchery.

Some eggs are sent to a federal hatchery in Washington, and some are placed in protected egg boxes in Petit and Alturas lakes south of Redfish.