Hope they make it past the gauntlet.

"Baker River to break all-time salmon record
​(6/1/17) The fish passage at the Baker River Project is preparing to break an all-time record for the highest number of juvenile salmon released in a single season. So far, more than 1.1 million sockeye and coho salmon smolts have been collected and transported downstream through our trap and haul facilities.

The smolts are one-year-old fish that will be making their journey to the ocean, where they will spend the next two years before returning as adult salmon in 2019.

For more than a decade, our Baker River biologists and fisheries technicians have worked closely with the NOAA Fisheries, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Sauk-Suiattle, Swinomish, and Upper Skagit Indian Tribes to boost the salmon population near our hydroelectric projects. This is only the second time in history that we’ve hit the one-million mark and with two months left in the season, we'll beat the record set in 2014."

“This is an incredible achievement, especially given that in the 1980s the Baker River’s sockeye population was nearly extinct,” said Matt Blanton, Baker River Plant Manager at Puget Sound Energy. “The milestone is a testament to the hard work and the partnerships built around this project.”

Baker sockeye have also enjoyed some unusually high smolt to adult survival rates, up to 12% and higher. How that happens at the same time when steelhead, which are larger smolts than sockeye, struggle to return even 1% causes me to realize just how little we understand about the ocean phase of the anadromous fish life cycle.

Sg

Maybe there are "high seas fisheries" going on that take more of the steelhead, than sockeye ?????

RUNnGUN....Sounds like a great project, hope sportsmen get to fish on the returning adults????

The other aspect of steelhead life history that is ignored for the most part is that they repeat spawn. Not because it is fun but because they evolved that way and need it to survive.

The complete data I have seen (rack counts, ages for all adults) hardly ever show a steelhead R/S even equal to 1 for survival to first spawning. Have seen one set that is >1 when the repeats are added to brood-year production and this analysis discounts the fact that most repeats are female and more fecund than virgins.

You get higher R/S when smolt age is lower, which may partially explain why hatchery programs were generally successful with the "salmon model" of spawn once.

I understand that some some runs in AK and Kamchatka have repeat proportions of 50-90% of the run. The R/S on virgins can't be very high.

As Salmon notes, this whole thing is way more complex and teasing out the answers will take lots of time and money. A steelhead broodyear may not have all the virgins back for six years. Which means that when you start a study that requires trapping, age analysis, and such that it takes six years for one complete data point. How many agencies have the institutional commitment to fund and operate a program for 15-20 years just to get basic information?

Their has been open seasons in the Skagit river in the past. Consistent openers in Baker Lake. Both depending on return numbers.