According to Tom Murtagh, ODFW distric District Fish Biologist: A significant proportion of the Willamette coho run has entered the Tualatin and is currently spawning throughout the basin, mostly above Hillsboro. Coho counts at the falls is just above 25,000 adults, a record. Interestingly, about 94-96% are naturally produced, that is produced by adult fish that spawned in tributary streams above the falls in 2006. No hatchery coho have been released above Willamette Falls since about 1997, so since then the run has been growing on natural production alone. We are seeing high numbers in some reaches, particularly in the Scoggins Channel and in the East Fork of Dairy Creek. Good numbers are turning up in the tributary streams to the Gales Creek system as well. Note too that they are also migrating in large numbers into the Yamhill, Molalla/Pudding, and to a lesser extent the Luckiamute and Santiam rivers. We hope to get up in the air this week to track fish and verify distribution of our radio tagged fish in tributaries below Salem.
Apparently, ODFW has a YouTube channel, and it’s pretty cool.
Also cool: Underwater rover footage in Depoe Bay — I’d love to see more of this:
Lastly, since messing around on YouTube is addictive and you wind up wasting waaaay too much time, we stumbled onto this cool video from ’07: Sockeye in the Nehalem?
-MS
