There used to be a few springers in the satsop back in the day.How I know this, is I almost went on a guided trip there for them in the late 80's early 90's,but our original plan came thru so we didn't have to end up there,but it was an option @ that time.Not gonna mention the guides name as he's a good one and still guides to this day,just not for springers on the satsop.Good luck,
SZ

Like drifter mentioned,they most likely were netted out.

SG the old Grisdale Camp crew went down in the gorge fishing Springers on the Nooche before the dam for the many years the logging camp existed. The spawning reach was the area the lake covers now and a little above. Don't recall MD or others talking about the reach near the falls. Locals are well aware of the history of the Springers and DW about wets himself on the subject.

As to why the agency refused to recognize the fish when the dam was built, don't know. Same with Sats Springers just a few and your right probably strays that established a little spot to call home but they were there every year when I was a kid. The Wynoochee was something else as that was a run be it small and be it did not fit the old agency matrix to manage.

SZ:

I wonder if in fact they were "springers" or what is left of some of the "really big Satsop Winter run Steelhead".

Nobody born after 1970 would know or remember this but Satsop used to be open until the end of April, so were some of the others. Anyhow, because I was a school teacher, I got to fish of some of those big "late" steelhead. Now before you jump all over me or this posting, this was way before the "Bolt Decision" and people just "caught fish".

Worman's Bar or where the "old boat launch" used to be...on the west side of the river......anyhow, as I drove in there...an "old timer" was fighting a fish...so I asked him if he needed help..he said "yes" that the other fish he'd caught, tired him out........I did net the fish for him....well neither of us had a scale.......but I would guess that both of those fish were....high 20's or low 30's.....

I did catch April steelhead, once on a 1st cast but never anything like those two.........all I ever used for bait/lure, at that time.....Sammi Specials.....

That was before many jet boats were even on the rivers or for that matter..........not many driftboats, either!!!!

Sorry....didn't mean to "Hi-jack" the thread but memories of days gone bye of a much better time..........when Steelhead were game fish.......and salmon was the food fish!!!!!

DrifterWa,
No it was a trip for spring salmon not springer's/steelhead.The trip ended up being on the lewis as conditions improved,rather then hitting the back up plan which was the satsop.Good luck,
SZ

They were Salmon as I caught one, blind luck. That said about the Steelhead. At the hatchery when I left the 27 lb Steely that Buddy mounted for me was still on the wall, came out of a QIN net. Sats seemed to have the bigger fish of all the tribs, always wondered if they were headed for West or Middle Fork, no way East. Big SOB's when I was a kid and guys like JM and others who are gone really did have fun. The old plunking shacks on the Chehalis were legendary but the ultimate was the guy who had the Baker hole shack on the Satsop. No boats ( much ), no freeway, ( no outsiders much ), no tribes nets, it was something then............ all gone.

Strike Zone,

You're cracking me up if the late 80s and early 90s were "back in the day." I didn't know you're such a punk kid! However, just read your post. You "know" because you were going to fish for Satsop springers with a guide, but didn't. Hmmm, come on now, is that what passes for knowledge out in Covington or Hobart? I didn't say there never were springers in the Satsop, but I was the young guy in the early 70s going through all the really old boxes of Chehalis basin fisheries data in the basement when WDF was in the GA building, and there were no official or unofficial records of them.

Rvrguy,

Yeah, there is enough anecdotal information to reasonably confirm a consistent Wynoochee population. Why the lack of any official records, I don't know, maybe for the same reason the Newaukum spawners weren't singled out separately from Chehalis springers in those days.

Drifter,

Make me cry! Worman's is where I caught my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th steelhead, and was the first time and place I'd ever seen a driftboat. Three or four driftboats on a Saturday meant it was the peak of the season and pretty heavy traffic in those days. Jet boat? What's a jet boat? I thought the Chehalis basin, Satsop included, were open only to April 15 back then, not the end of the month. However, some say my memory is slipping lately.

Sg

In the 90's, I watched a guy catch a spring chinook in the Satsop on eggs. It was June 1.

In Salmo. G's defense he was only 2 holes up from the mouth, so it could have easily been a wrong turn at the mouth.

Later in life I actually ended up sort of befriending the guy who caught the springer that day. I asked him about it (this was 3 years later) and he actually caught 7 of them that week. A feat he never repeated or had done before that.

sg:

Might have been 4/15......but I know Satsop, Wynoochee, Humptulips, Upper Quinault and Queets were open about that same time......Spring Vacation, for me, was around the 1st or 2nd weeks of April..caught some scary big fish "in the old days".

QIN never started gill netting steelhead until way after they got the 50% ruling....I actual think that because steelhead were under the "old game department"........Steelhead were a "game fish", not a commercial fish, so QIN pulled the nets about the end of October......It was pretty fair fishing in the Humptulips, Wynoochee, and Satsop.......until QIN decided that steelhead were "fair game" and started netting them. Now the 5 day a week December 1 - ---- ?????? has just about wiped out the Native Steelhead and working to eliminate the "late Coho"...

If mother nature couldn't do it. Why would anyone think trying a hatchery run would work, not gonna happen. The upper chehalis and those two tribs have plenty.

OK theres been sturgen recorded in the chehalis since the late 1800s as well as the hoquiam river. So I have a hard time saying there columbia fish. Maybe Theres old stories of these monster fish being hooked while fishing for salmon. and scaring them. When my Dad was a kid in the 40s all he talked about was fishing for these fish, and there was lots of them, in the cosmopolis area all the way up to the black river. But as anything else logging and nets ect has pretty much done them in.. But they have been in there for many years, there recorded go to the libary and look at the history of grays harbor. I was told by an old timer there was a small springer run up till the 70s

I'm of the understanding that virtually all of the PNW coastal sturgeon are either "Columbia" or "Fraser" fish...but only to the extent that they spawn in one of those two rivers...otherwise they spend the rest of the year all over the place, in most coastal streams and in most Puget Sound streams, and in the salt and Puget Sound proper.

There are still springers in the Chehalis system, but not in the lower tribs...you can go up to the Newaukum in the summer and see the hillbillies "fishing for cutthroat" with salmon gear and snagging them out of the deeper holes.

Fish on...

Todd

This interesting, so all will be armed. When the Skook Dam was built the concept of Springer mitigation or production came up and moved forward but was dropped. Then what is called Fish Management ( or Harvest ) stated that the regulated flows, tri level out take would produce additional Springers to have a " vibrant " sport fishery. In addition a bunch of stuff including weirs were to be used but they went by the wayside. So you choose your poison.

On the Newaukum the Pigeon Springs reach is the one used most by Springers and frankly the competition with snagging is what a USF&W guy called pipe bombs. Seems they fill PVC pipe with powder , seal with a water fuse and wella. Never seen it but when they snorkeled the river they were horrified to find them. The Pe Ell reach I lack a history so maybe somebody else could connect the dots.

Of all the factors with Springers in the Chehalis the thing is they should not be there. Wrong conditions but the gravel upwelling provide cooler water allowing them to survive. The fact is in the best of all things there were few. The illegal fishing on them above Porter has had the greatest impact ( and still does ) on the fish.

As to old Sturgeon, Jones Photography has a photo collection that the original Jones did in the early last century. The ones that stand out to me is the 6 to 8 ft Sturgeon long lined and pulled in by draft horses. They used the reach below the present bridge down to what is now the Port of GH. Like the Columbia pictures, this and the whaling / salmon harvest was documented better than most as the original Jones had a real sense of history. His grandson just pasted away and I think ( think ? ) the collection went to the Polson Museum in Hoquiam.

SG,

Why ya callin me a punk ass kid ya"Know it all jackass".Just stating what I know about the small run or dip in's from the halis,what's Hobart or Covington got to do with it.Go wave your ferry wond down on the cow and stay off my ass.Good luck,
SZ

To quote Bruce Brown in his book "Mountain In The Clouds: A Search For The Wild Salmon".........


"Like Quinalt, the word Satsop originally referred to a river, a tribe of indians, and a prized run of salmon. Known as tsa' tsap, these steelhead and spring chinook (the term appears to have referred to both) were famous on nearby Puget Sound, where pioneering icthyologist George Suckley observed in in 1848: "The Puget Sound indians take a salmon in summer which is known to the....bands speaking the Nisqually dialect as satsup. This they considered to be the best of all kinds of salmon they catch"

Kind of a nebulous description near the end of the passage....were the Puget Sound tribes applying the label to locally caught fish or were they fishing the Satsop itself?. Regardless, it mentions a damn fine quality salmon coming from the Satsop. Doubt the label would apply to Fall fish.

I share this from the book as another piece of evidence to suggest the Satsop historically had a spring chinook run.

The Satsop Tribe had a reservation long ago and in the mixing and moving around that went on with the settlers they became part of the QIN. The old burial site is near Cramers ( Schafer Park area ) and it was in the local paper while back as some were trying to preserve it.

Little edit here. Many don't know but the East Fork Satsop Chinook in the natural state were primarily Summer Chinook. We did a bunch of work with them and they will religiously make Schafer Park by October 10th. As to the bay not sure as a lot of views but it is as early as July August and September mostly I think. The upper Chehalis has Summers also but they move up river very slowly. When we broodstocked we had to wait for cooler water as the female Summers timed out if you handled them, stress thing I was told. The agency has refused to manage them separately and even used to call them Early Fall Chinook. I was told the remenate population did not fit the agency harvest driven matrix and with the courts decisions that pretty well sealed the thing as the tribes cared zip.

The Falls that dominate the run now are from the transfer over several years of the entire Humptulips Hatchery run when they went native brood.

there was a article in the monte paper in the 100 years ago column about canners planting blacks(kings) from the Sacramento river in California to get an early run on the chehalis. sometime in the 1890's

Lot of things done right down to moving fish around. Bingham ( EF Sats ) Coho were put throughout the watershed by the millions a year.

But with Chinook .........The second Satsop Hatchery was a pumped station across the river , just below the bridge at Schafer Park. The remaining gravel bottom / concrete standards are West of the river in the field across from the Beerbower Road. One year, old records show, 50 million eggs were taken and transferred to the old Upper Chehalis Hatchery but something went wrong and they perished. That may be the year age group wipe out someone referred to earlier.

What is missed is this. Prior to Simpson being built in the 50's, now Bingham, the East Fork Satsop was primarily a Chinook stream. Late Coho to the dry run and Bingham Creeks and a normal run timing of late November for Coho. T day fish we called them when I was a kid. Run compression, stock manipulation, stock importing, and massive out plantings of fry and smolt, all designed to provide greater harvest altered everything ............... shall we say a lot. What those who did not grow up around here think is normal or native or wild ( depending on definition ) is more than likely not so. Long history, lot of players.

Stam,

Laffin' is right, uh-huh. Fishermen can be a good source of information, but the track record proves they are also the source of the least reliable information. I know, I know, you've never, ever, heard a fisherman lie, but not everyone lives in your small bubble Stam. As for state records passing for knowledge, I'll say that it's one part of knowledge and a place to begin. Just as the track record proves fishermen info is often notoriously unreliable, state or other gov't. records are frequently incomplete - which was a good thing for me as it got me a temporary job surveying - guess what? - spring chinook.

RR,

Straying is what fish do, especially early run fish like spring chinook and summer steelhead.

Drifter,

You're one lucky old man!

Red,

You're very right on the first count, but not so much on the second. The Chehalis springer run is so small that it defies meaningful conservation biology to allow a fishery on it.

Rvrguy,

You may recall about the Skook dam that old WDG was very aggressive about getting full fish and wildlife mitigation from Pacificorp, thanks to the hard work of a bio I'm sorry to have forgotten his name (it's on the plaque by the wildlife area). Old WDF didn't pursue salmon mitigation nearly as hard. Don't know why.

The Chehalis basin is atypical of westside springer habitat, but if you look at where the springers spawn (or did), it is in the areas that most closely resemble spring chinook habitat. I hypothesize that the run is a relic of former times when climate and watershed conditions were more favorable for them. And given the elevations, it probably never was a large run, but has always been well known and played a significant part in Chehalis Tribal culture.

While the EF has no doubt always been a chinook stream, I think it's under-cutting it to say primarily chinook. The EF also has ideal steelhead, cutthroat, and coho habitat, the latter two species in the upper section especially.

A lot of bucket fish biology has gone on in the Chehalis basin for sure. Looks like you have the inside track on a lot of it.

LarryB,

It's likely that they did, and equally likely that not a single recruit returned from the effort.

Strike Zone,

Hey, I'm not the one who called the late 80s and early 90s "back in the day." OK, I'll stay off your azz. Now go trim your mullet.

Eric,

Way to throw a stone in the soup! It would take more info than that bit from Suckley to sort it out. I doubt PS tribes would travel to the Satsop to fish, since they had local rivers and fish. Like Rvrguy mentions, the probability for a summer chinook in the Satsop would be far more likely than springers. The springs (water source) on the EF are an important water source that would facilitate a summer stock. Not sure of the stock, but I saw Sept. spawners in the EF 40 years ago.

Sg