I was scanning the hatchery return page and noticed 42 sockeye had been counted at Sunset Falls.

Are these all likely to be strays, or are they offspring of strays that spawned, or is there some other explanation? I've never noticed sockeye showing up in the report before but I'm sure I could have missed it.

Skywalker -
There always a few sockeye in the Sky and most of out other Puget Sound streams annually. The number over Sunset is higher than normal.
For Sunset Falls
In 2003 - - -13 sockeye passed upstream
2002 - - - 21 sockeye passed upstream
2001 - - - 22 sockeye passed upstream
2000 - - - 9 sockeye passed upstream

The thinking is that most of these fish are different than those commonly found in local lake populations. The riverine sockeye are thought to be a widespread race of sockeye that are found in variety of rivers and may serve as the seed source for colonizing new populations.

Some evidence of this is that are river fish spawn much earlier than say the Lake Washington and Baker lake populations. The river fish from mid-August through September. The Lake Washington fish for example spawn from mid-September into January.

Tight lines
S malma

This tells you everything about Puget Sound River Sockeye . Rivers that sockeye have turned up in are the Whte, Minter Creek, Upper Skagit, Nooksack, and others listed on that page.

Smalma,

This is a topic that interests me immensely, so I hope you don't mind if I try a few questions...

I've heard the theory of a widespread race of riverine sockeye...that perhaps the few that go up all the rivers are one "run" that randomly goes out looking for spots to colonize and start other runs, be they "riverine" or "lake" type runs.

What kind of evidence of there is this...or is it just a hypothesis?

This strikes me as a really, really interesting life history for such a run, if it is how it's going down. I wonder what other applications information about this type of a "pioneer" race could have, i.e., colonization of other types of fish, salmonids or otherwise.

Do you think they would have a common ancestor in a previously established run, or would it be from various previously established runs, or would they be their own established pioneer race that has no true home river?

Do you think that they could give rise to a "lake" type run, if they ran up a system with a lake in it, or would they only be able to establish a "river" type run? Could they do both?

Could they take genetic information from one established run, and transfer it into another established run, perhaps improving the genetic fitness of the run?

Has anyone ever done any genetic analyses of such pioneer runs? Any good information ever come out of it?

Thanks so much for your time....I know that this is probably all hypothetical, but I'd love to year your opinions, even if they are all hypothetical, too.

If it were true, what an awesome piece of the entire world of sockeye...

Fish on...

Todd

Fishjunky,

I've also seen or caught them in the Green River, Whatcom Creek, and the Stilly...and in a couple upper Skagit tributaries.

Fish on,

Todd

Todd -
Not sure anyone knows the whole story on these rive sockeye. Genetically those found in Washington appear to sort related to lots of different stocks up and down the coast though not closely to any Washington lake stocks. I have to wonder if they are a composite of strays from populations up and down the coast. - a dozen fish in say the NF Stilli might be a mixture of several Frazier stocks, some from farther north and maybe a local stock of two. It seems unlikely to me that there is a discrete river stock found all along the coast.

Clearly when a group of these fish find some suitable habitat - such as a newly formed lake or gain access to previously unaccessable waters they quickly develop a locally adapted stock. One thing about all our salmonids is that they are very plastic genetically. Meaning that traits can evolve quite quickly. This is due in part to the extreme selection that occurs on the populations. That would mean that in a relatively short period of time the newly adapted stock would have evolved into a stock quite different from the parent donor stock.

An example of how rapidly fish can evolve would be the naturalized hatchery summer steelhead above Sunset falls. The major of the parent stock was Skamania stock. They were mostly 2 and 3 salt fish with a January/February spawning timing. Today 20 years later (or 4/5 fish generations) very few of the fish are 3 salts and quite a few are 1 salts. The spawn timing has move much later with the onset being mid-March and continuing on into May. The peak of the spawning has moved about 10 weeks which is astounding in just 4 or 5 generations - saying something about the envirnomental selection going on in the Skykomish for late spawning.

I have seen adult sockeye in virtually all the larger streams in North Puget Sound. In addition to those all ready mentioned I have seen them in the Snoqualmie, Tokul Creek, Tolt, North Fork Skykomish, Wallace, SF/NF Stillaguamish, Boulder Creek, NF/SF Sauk, NF/SF Nooksack. A interesting observation was in Deer Creek (NF Stilli) - folks have been monitoring the summer steelhead in that basin for years (back into the 1950s) with snokerel surveys, foot surveys, etc and to my knowledge a sockeye had never been seen in the basin. My own experience in the basin began in 1979 and I visited it annually between 1981 and 2000 and I never saw a sockeye until 1994 when I found a 100 of them. Go figure! Since that time have seen them one other time.

After watching fish populations for decades it is clear that a fallacy that we as humans constantly fall into is the expectation that salmonid populations should be static. In reality they are very dynamic with abundances varying with survival conditions and they are constantly adapting to a changing environment. The various stategies that various species use to adapt to those dynamic conditions is absolutely fascinating.

Tight lines
S malma

FYI

I had the pleasure of helping Stillaguamish Tribe out a few weeks ago; we netted 15 sockeyes (we weren’t after them) in one pole on the Stillaguamish. Along with kings, steelhead, bull trout and Stillaguamish Golden Bones fish. We only took about 20% of the fish we caught, and all the fish are for Stilly Tribe Hatchery Program. We used 2 inches mesh so there was no gilling of any fish. We check the water temp about every 30 minutes (that was my job) it ran from 54 degrees to 58 degrees.

Good info, Smalma...thank you.

Wow! We need some interested PhD students out there to put in some time on this one...what an interesting thesis it would make if any of this stuff could be figured out with some certainty.

As an obvious fish to see out of its usual place, being bright red and around in low water situations, sockeye would be easy (easier, I guess) to study than would fish that are less obvious and have much larger established ranges, but I wonder what the applications of any sockeye information would have to straying/colonization abilities of fish that aren't so obvious, like steelhead or coho, as they get too easily mixed in with the many other steelhead and coho in the rivers.

Fish on...

Todd

Thanks for your comments, gentlemen! I really had no idea.

I actually saw three Sockeye swimming in the Sky about 10 years ago in a little side stream.

If I remember correctly, it was in summer of '01 that I saw a few sockeye swimming downstream in the Nork Fork Stillaguamish.