Northwest Wild Country Radio Station

Joel Blog Mug Back when I was covering the NBA and professional boxing, I was a fiend for trends and statistics. I've apparently carried that same mentality into the fishwriter field.

This morning I found myself mining nuggets from the Fish Passage Center databases, trying to make some sort of connection between Trend A and Statistic B. I don't know if I've done that, but, at the very least, I've dug up a few interesting spring Chinook factoids.

Here they are:

Still lagging: The May 5 cumulative springer count over Bonneville Dam is 47,060, which is 28 percent lower than the 65,443 over the dam by this time last year, and 59 percent lower than the 10-year average of 114,525.

JACK-pot!: This year’s run has the highest jack count in several years: to date, 6,975 jacks have passed Bonneville, compared to 1,547 in 2008 and the 10-year average of 2,928.

Brrrr, Part I: Water temperatures in the lower river were routinely 4 degrees colder vs. the 10-year average in early April, and have continued to be very slow to warm through early May. The temperature didn’t climb to 50 degrees until April 19 – it usually hits 50 by April 11 or 12 – and it stayed at that temperature for 11 days.

Brrrr, Part II (but getting warmer): The average water temperature on May 5 is 52.0 degrees. The latest reading (May 5) puts it at 51.0 degrees.

Past the peak?: May 1 is the bellweather day for spring Chinook returns at Bonneville Dam, with 5,000 to 6,000 over on the 10-year average.

2008's big day: The springer graph spiked like a heartrate monitor on May 4, 2008, when 9,686 fish passed through the dam on May 4. Just two days before, only 2,027 were counted.

Top this: The biggest day ever for spring Chinook over Bonneville dam? How about 27,020 on April 18, 2001?

Those were the days: Anybody remember that magical 10-day period from April 10 to April 19, 2001, when 163,844 springers were counted at Bonneville?!?

Movin' on up ...: Fish have started to move out of the Bonneville Pool: 10,813 springers have passed The Dalles Dam over the past two days.

... but staying put, too: 49 percent of the current run (22,970 fish) is still somewhere between Bonneville and The Dalles.

-JS