Just a quick follow up to Greg Schoby from IDFG’s update from Monday (6/9)…
We’ve only observed one additional Sawtooth adult Chinook salmon PIT tag since that update, so our harvest share is still hovering around 400 fish.
The IDFG Commission will meet tomorrow (Friday 6/13) to review and discuss the summer Chinook fishery proposals for the SF Salmon, upper Salmon, and Lochsa rivers. For the upper Salmon River proposal, we have updated the proposal to open a larger stretch of river. The new proposal is to open the Salmon River approximately 50 yards upstream of the mouth of the Yankee Fork Salmon River, upstream to the posted boundary ~100 yards downstream of the Sawtooth Hatchery weir. As many of you know, our fishery boundaries are determined by the number of wild fish returning to the various tributaries in the upper Salmon. Just like the hatchery component, we’ve been watching the wild fish numbers closely and based on the current numbers, we’ll be able to fish below Valley Creek. We’ll continue to watch these numbers and make sure wild Chinook continue to come in as expected, but in case they don’t, we will have to shorten the fishery area.
If the season is approved by the Commission, the fishery would open June 19th and run 7 days per week. The proposed bag limits would be 4 Chinook, only 2 of which may be adults. As usual, we will be monitoring the fishery closely. Based on what we’ve seen in the past, I wouldn’t expect a lot of action on the opening weekend, but we have seen two PIT tagged wild Chinook cross the PIT array just upstream of Salmon in the past week, so Chinook are working their way towards the upper river. As I noted last week, the Chinook fisheries in the upper Salmon depend on a variety of things, such as run timing, stream flows and temperature, and of course angler effort. We’ll be keeping a close eye on all those things and sending out updates.
Thanks, and keep an eye on the IDFG website for an update following the Commission meeting tomorrow.
