Just a big ol’ fish tale!

The Story of Salmon...

Insurmountable odds, a mysterious journey, implacable foes, yearning for home, brutal struggle, death, resurrection – with a story line that keeps you on the edge of your seat and stunning visual effects, I don’t understand why Pacific Northwest salmon haven’t won an Oscar. From thousands of carmine eggs like jewels lying in a streambed, to a monster fish beating its way upstream, or a monster fillet on the grill, it’s a wild ride.

We could start anywhere in the salmon circle of life. Northwest tribes celebrate it at both ends, from the first fish returning to the ocean in the spring and bringing lifeblood to the people, to the fall homecoming that starts the rebirth of the run.

The fall return of salmon to their spawning grounds is a spectator sport at hatchery streams and river banks, people gaping at the almost grotesquely colored and shaped animals slamming into rocks, wriggling over each other, jumping and thumping their way home: bright red sockeye, hunchbacked pinks, or chum, who have earned the nickname “dog salmon” for the fearsome looking teeth they develop at spawning. “I cut myself on one once, they’re really sharp,” said Dana Scanlan, who runs the salmon program at the Vancouver Aquarium in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Scanlan invites visitors to watch the action at the aquarium hatchery stream, but said most Northwest rivers and creeks are home to salmon runs. “Just about any little stream will have salmon spawning in it,” she said. Scanlan can’t explain why, it might be by scent, but salmon come back to the same spot they started out as eggs to lay their own eggs in a nest they dig in the gravel with their tails. Then they die. “In their world that makes sense,” she said. “They are the nutrients for the stream. Visualize a dead decaying body in a stream. What will it attract? Bugs. What do little fish eat? Bugs?”

When salmon eggs hatch the little guys look like cartoon characters, with huge eyes. When they make it to an inch long they swim out of the gravel bed and start eating. At about four inches, they’re called fingerlings and they start on the trip out to sea, sometimes up to 1,000 miles. The odds are not in their favor. A little four-inch fish is a tasty treat for everything from heron to other fish. For every 2,500 salmon eggs lain, four make it out to sea as adults. Scanlan said at the mouth of the Puntledge River the seals line up for a fish feast. “It’s like a seal buffet,” she said. “They just suck in the water and take in mouthfuls of fry as they swim down.”

Once out at sea the salmon cover a lot of ground. “We don’t really know where they go,” Scanlan said. “They might go all the way to Japan.” And what are they doing? Eating, and eating a lot. Depending on the species they spend up to seven years in the ocean before heading in to spawn, and the longer they spend out there the more they eat and the bigger they grow. Chinook, or King, salmon can grow over 100 pounds – if they get a chance.

“ They’re not just eating out, they’re being eaten,” Scanlan said. Everybody loves salmon: orcas, sea otters, seals, sharks, cod, swordfish – and us. Pacific Northwest fisherman catch up to 10 million pounds of salmon in a good year: they are tangled in gillnets, scooped up by purse-seiners, snagged on hooks or lured into one of the now-rare reef nets to have their throats gently slit.

Today’s harvests in the Pacific Northwest are described as “a mere remnant of historical abundance” by the American Fisheries Society. Runs that count on human intervention in hatcheries to protect the young fish at their most vulnerable are estimated to make up 85 percent of the commercial catch in the Pacific Northwest, and a growing number of wild populations are considered endangered.

You can’t point a finger at what exactly is threatening this regional icon, but hydroelectric dams, agriculture, overfishing, disease and drought all make the list. The salmon way of life is all-or-nothing: every fish that makes it back to where she started means a few thousand more chances for that run to thrive. Every patch of spawning ground damaged could mean thousands less chances. “The way it’s designed is delicate,” Scanlan said. “You put a little stress on it and it can have a big impact.”

----------------------------------------

Doug Huddle of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Bellingham office recommends the following salmon watching spots for summer and fall.

For spring chinook salmon, try the Kendall Creek Hatchery in July and August. Most Tuesdays and Thursdays hatchery staff are handling adults. Naturally spawning springs can occasionally be seen in the north fork of the Nooksack River as the Mt. Baker Highway winds along the river through the national forest.

For fall chinook, check out the Samish River at Old Highway 99, or get a close up look at the hatchery trap and pond on Upper Green Road just north of the 99 bridge.

Pink salmon can be spotted in Thompson Creek at Glacier Creek Road off the Mt. Baker Highway in September. “This year’s run is not going to be anywhere near as spectacular in terms of overall numbers,” Huddle said. “There are some odd years.”

For coho salmon it’s the Lummi Nation’s Skookum Hatchery in late October and November. “The natural spawning population in the Nooksack basin is small,” Huddle said. “Good places to see wild coho are difficult to find because they spawn in small creeks a lot of which are on private property.” He suggests the North Fork of Dakota Creek at Burke Road, Innis Creek at Innis Creek Road, Friday Creek at Donovan County Park in Skagit County on Friday Creek Road.

The Maritime Heritage Center hatchery handles lots of chum salmon in late October and November. For wild groups of chum, the best place is Kinney Slough on the North Fork Road east of Welcome. “This spot can be spectacular, with anywhere from 200 to 1,000 chum visible at peak spawn,” Huddle said.

For sockeye salmon, try Channel Creek and the perk spots at the upper east end of Baker Lake reservoir. Drive the Baker Lake Road up past Swift Creek almost to its end.
For a nice, short streamside hike in the Mt. Baker Ranger District, the U.S. Forest Service has the Boyd Creek Interpretive Trail on the Deadhorse Creek Road east of Glacier. Glimpses of wild chinook (August-September), pinks (September), native char (October-November), coho (October-November) and winter-run steelhead (April-May) are possible from the boardwalk here if observers are patient and quiet.

Huddle added spawning salmon are busy, and asked that observers watch quietly from a distance and not in any way disturb spawning salmon. Sunglasses with polarized lens cut surface glare and make it easier to see fish and their redds.