Good news for Lake Washington salmon.

Check out this article.

http://enterprisenewspapers.com/index.cfm?action=story&storyid=200425116175

Cig

Both of these streams have much larger cutthroat populations than Salmon. Because of degraded habitat the streams are practically useless as Salmon habitat, not sure that this will really help Salmon much. But will put more cutties in the lake, which we do enjoy catching.

NEN

NEN,

I know these creeks quite well, and there is a lot of sockeye and silvers spawning in the lower reaches. PSA (Mercer Island chapter or Renton chapter) places spawning barrels in them. A long time resident of Lake Ballinger raises and releases coho into Ballinger and they swim down McAleer creek into Lake Washington When I was a little kid, the lake washington cutts could make it up the creek to Ballinger and behond. But when I-5 was built, a weir was constructed under the freeway blocking fish passage and creating too much cfs. These creeks are deffenitly salvageable.

Cig

Cig,

Sorry if I came of wrong here, everything we can do is good, it sure as hell beats paving another parcel and putting a strip mall on it. And maybe a few sockeye do spawn in these creeks, I just have never seen the creeks on anyones counts before. As far as spawning barrels, any idea on the success of said barrels. Seems the majority of the fish(coho)that returned to spawn died prespawn.

I can not find the exact numbers, but know that the populations of cutthroat have exploded on all small tribs to lake washington while the coho and stealhead numbers have disappeard. In a healthy system, such as the satsop for example, Coho and Stealhead smolts outnumber cutthroat 200 and 10 to 1, respectively. In many of these small Lk Wa tribs those numbers are reversed to 10 cutthroat to 1 coho smolt, and the stealhead numbers are gone. Please do not quote these numbers, but I know they are close, I just do not have the exact ones in front of me.

The reason for this is all about the degraded habitat, coho smolts spend so long in the inhospitable streams that they are out competed with by cutthroat, who do not need to spend the same amount of time in the streams.

Overall, I think the addition to the area that fish will be able to spawn is good, I just feel that it could be spent better in areas on the Cedar River. Pull back a few levies, buy quality habitat, create spawning channels, etc..
Thanks for pointing out the article, and I will look into the numbers of fish that are spawning in these tribs closer.

NEN

Where do I get a hold of these numbers, or other tribs of Lake Washington for that matter?

I grew up in Lynnwood and recall vast #'s of sockeye spawning in swamp creek. I don't believe the sockeye are as prevelant or wonder if they make it up that creek anymore at all. Maybe there is hope there too...

Jeff'ed',

I have a friend that lives on Swamp Creek....
sockeye and silvers by the thousands every
year and some years he has seen king too.

Cig