Report from John McMillan of the Wild Salmon center on what has moved into some of the spawning areas of the Hoh ...

"In all I counted 49 chinook spawning in Winfield Creek and 22 chinook spawning in a short reach of the lower Hoh River sidechannel. I walked from the Clearwater mainline bridge (on Winfield Creek) down about 400m and was simply amazed at the number of chinook I found. A large chunk of the fish were very bright and some of the largest fish ranged up to 40-50lbs. I counted 10 fresh redds, which were still being excavated, and about 21 test digs in the 400m reach of Winfield Creek. Conversely, most of the chinook spawning in the lower Hoh sidechannel were darker (only 2 bright ones) and I counted a total of 6 redds were which being dug. The observation of fewer bright fish in the sidechannel compared to Winfield Creek may not mean much, I simply brought it up as an observation."

I'd like to see a few more than this myself, but I'm glad that we were able to get some of the fish spread out and I'm sure there will be more come

Looks like the rain came in the nick of time...

...I'm a little pessimistic as to how many Chinook will make it up to the higher spawning areas.

Plan on doing some scouting in some of the upper tribs this coming weekend just to see how many of the coho I saw beating it through the riffles down low made the journey successfully.