Co-Authors:  Ben Roll and Jason Horst, Fisheries Technicians

The wait for fishes to arrive is over. This week at the Salmon River smolt trap, near White Bird, Fisheries Technicians Ben and Jason handled 1,270 juvenile Chinook salmon. Most of these were of hatchery origin and likely came from Rapid River Fish Hatchery, which is located 31 miles upstream near Riggins, Idaho. The technicians recorded fish lengths, existing clips, marks, tags, and other biological data. The crew inserted PIT tags in 600 hatchery and 28 wild Chinook salmon, and returned all of them to the river to resume their migration to the Pacific Ocean. Soon, several thousand fishes will be trapped each day. The crews will continue operating the trap through the end of May or until river conditions impede safe trapping operations.

This continued to be a slow week for catching fishes at the Snake River trap with a few kokanee salmon caught.

Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Fish Passage Center cooperatively operate this fish trap as a key component of the Smolt Monitoring Program and the Comparative Survival Study. More information about these important wild salmon and steelhead trout projects is available at https://www.fpc.org/fpc_homepage.php

For more information on Idaho’s wild salmon and steelhead click here https://idfg.idaho.gov/fish/wild.