Quote:
after reading the statement that there are no wild Chinook left in the willapa I remembered reading in the vidette that in the 1890's the canneries on Gray's harbor planted "blacks" from the Sacramento river to have an early run king in the Chehalis to can. so does this mean that there are no native early run kings in the chehalis


No not really. The Chehalis has one Chinook run that starts around may and ends in December. Our Chinook run starts with the Springers ( which are not Springers in the normal sense but the front end of the summer component ) followed in July by the primary Summer Chinook coming in through mid September. The last part of the run is mid Sept through the first part of October finishing with the late component latter part of October and November. The December Chinook that went to the E. & W. Folks Satsop, and two tributaries near Elma are pretty much wiped out. The Summers are primarily E. Fork Satsop & Upper Chehalis. Now the Wynoochee did have a true Springer run that Spawned in the gorge ( pre dam ) that WDFW did not recognize and are gone despite local efforts led by GHTU which DW can tell you about as he baby sat the brood.

Now hatchery releases of different numbers and stocks have occurred and some rather substantial. The second Satsop hatchery built was next to Schafer Park and one year they took 5 or 50 million eggs ( typo or ?? as no one knows ) and transferred them to the old Upper Chehalis Hatchery which lost them due to facility failure. Another is when the Hump went to native stock Chinook the entire Hump hatchery run of Chinook was transferred to the East Fork Satsop, reared to yearlings and released.

So in the Chehalis we have a Chinook run that has three distinct run timings as to spawning but the entry through the bay gets muddled. The thing is not many Chinook come in from the salt Nov & Dec but rather enter the bay and stage ( hold ) in the tide water areas in the Chehalis, which is to the South Elma Bridge on the Chehalis. Adults returning to some streams stage pretty hard up to several months, which is why they take a real pounding by commercials fisheries as they have a real habit of hanging out in the tidal zones of the river which is where the commercial fisheries are.


Edited by Rivrguy (07/08/14 01:49 PM)
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Dazed and confused.............the fog is closing in