If you’ve seen the recent news regarding Snake River steelhead returns, you’ve likely asked yourself, what’s the issue with the four lower Snake River dams? With returns totaling nearly 100,000 steelhead over Lower Granite dam one would believe brighter days are ahead.
But if history repeats itself, this is just a blip on the radar of a long and failed recovery program.
Good fishing, for now
Ask any steelhead angler how they determine to fish or not to fish and they will undoubtedly tell you; dam counts. These anglers have an eye trained on the Fish Passage Center’s daily dam counts, comparing daily counts to the previous year’s counts and the 10-year averages. Some years add salt to the wounds of disappointment, and some add optimism to the season ahead.
We saw increased angler participation on the Clearwater River through October and continue to hear reports of great catch rates on the Salmon River in Riggins, Idaho, all signs that steelhead anglers are watching returns closely.
But like anything, reading the fine print is critical, and so an air of caution is cast on these returns.
Research tells a deeper story
In the summer of 2009, I participated in a fisheries survey on the tributaries of the legendary Middle Fork Salmon River. Our task was to collect wild Oncorhynchus mykiss or rainbow trout tissue samples throughout the tributaries of the Middle Fork. The Middle Fork Salmon River has been identified by the Idaho Fish and Game as a wild steelhead conservation area. With no hatchery integration, this system is the gold standard for wild steelhead genetics.
This and several other sampling events were the start and ultimately the backbone of today’s Genetic Stock Indexing program. These tissue samples allow researchers to genotypically identify individual adult steelhead returning to one of ten unique genetic stocks in the Snake River basin in an effort to reconstruct wild steelhead returns.
In similar fashion returning adult hatchery steelhead can be traced back to their parentage in a program called Parental Based Tagging. Although important, our focus is on the health and status of the wild steelhead returns to the Snake River Basin––one of four species we work to restore and recover––through breach of the four lower Snake River dams and restoration of normative flow regimes.
Data leads to reports showing true numbers
Annually, biologists from Idaho Fish and Game publish status reports on a number of programs and projects. Recently, a report detailing wild adult steelhead and Chinook salmon abundance and composition at Lower Granite Dam in 2023 was released. Like previous years these reports provide insight and clarity of abundance of wild steelhead populations in the 10 genetically unique populations.
For spawn year 2023, just 13,631 wild steelhead were estimated to have crossed Lower Granite. This translates to 13% of the proposed escapement goal of 104,000 wild steelhead and 65% of the minimum abundance threshold of 21,000 set by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
While abundance is low, the 5-year geometric mean of wild steelhead escapement (11,367 fish for 2019–2023) is 43% of the previous 5-year geometric mean, the authors note the low adult-to-adult productivity estimates are a major cause for concern.
The authors state, “steelhead populations with productivity far below one recruit per spawner (replacement) are at risk of severe population declines or extirpation. The 5-year average of overall adult-to-adult productivity for wild steelhead (2011-2015) was below replacement at 0.48 recruits per spawner. Small stocks with dwindling productivities are particularly vulnerable to extirpation, and their extinction would be a big loss for the overall genetic diversity of the species in the Snake River basin.”
Thank goodness for resiliency
Undoubtedly, we should see a higher abundance of wild steelhead as a percentage of the total run and with crossed fingers adult-to-adult production with this year’s run numbers.
While these low abundance numbers are cause for concern, we know that this species is incredibly resilient and if left to their own devices and a free-flowing lower Snake River, they can and will recover. In the meantime, advocate for breach, but take advantage of the plentiful hatchery returns by getting out to fish now.