upper salmon/south fork Chinook season set

[ddahl3]

I saw this on the fish and game website a few min ago. I know its still a ways out but i am pretty damn stoked about this. http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/medi...ewsID=7140
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[LSR83]

Awesome!!! Guess my salmon fishing season just got extended!!!
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[SteelFan]

Might get my first Salmon on the Salmon this year!!!! Come on June.........
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[Huntsman]

If we can keep the downstream Rodgers from poaching our fish before they reach the canyon....

How about a limit on the main Salmon harvest from Time Bridge to Shorts Bar.....
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[lowe-185]

getting the fly rods ready. cant wait.
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[phutch30]

Looking at tags vs tagging rates it doesnt seem (at least to me) that theres many SF or Passimroi fish yet. The sawtooth numbers dont seem too impressive either. I wonder what the quotas are gunna be
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[Huntsman]

Putsch, interesting....


I visited "off-the-record" with one of IDFG's biologists that had spent a bunch of time at LG, and he said that the vast majority of PIT data sampled were head for the Sawtooth.

It'd be nice to get a straight answer from the Dept once in a while.....

[crazy]
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[Huntsman]

Another visit with IDFG promotes a "good feeling" towards ripping some lips above the North Fork....

The good ol day may be back!! Now if we could just fish the Middle Fork, and the Lemhi..........
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[Biigfish33]

Does anyone have an estimate of when they think the fish will make it into the upper river?
Seemed like the last time I fished the upper river when it opened up (2010 or 2011?) the fish peaked around the Ellis/challis area about the 10th of July.
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[chrome_junky]

With the high water, I would say around the same time.
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[ddahl3]

That same year we did really well around the 4 th of july.
I think it should be pretty similar.

[indent]Just on a side note...Is there any place/ website that keeps track of the different pit tag
fish. I was hoping for a site or information that will ultimately tell you where the fish
is going.
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[jb_SRB]

here is the site you are looking for : http://www.fpc.org/adultsalmon_home.html
you will need to know the release site code for where your interested in checking.

[Biigfish33]

I thought that might be the case. June 21 opener sounds very early.
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[ddahl3]

I think it is early as well. But when you consider that you can fish from just above the north fork it might not be as early as you think . North fork to challis is over 80 miles.

Lets just hope they come up in by the thousands.
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[Biigfish33]

You are right, that's a long way to travel. I hope so too, would hate to have it end up being a disappointing run.

With the F&G opening it up all the way to Stanley, you would think there should be a number of fish destined for pahsimeroi and sawtooth hatcheries.
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[Got_Bait]

I got 1,316 sawtooth fish over LG so far.
Minus 950 for hatchery quote = 366
Split 50/50 with tribes = 183 harvest quota

381 Pahsimeroi fish over LG
600 fish hatchery quota = not enough for harvest yet

I would really like to see a bunch more of these fish show up at Bonneville over the next 3 weeks, because I don't know if we got that many between Bonne and LG currently.

South Fork looks respectable though.
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[kglass]

ddahl3,
there is a lot of information available at the PTAGIS website. it takes a little bit of effort to get really useful information... you have to create a username and access the "advanced reporting" option. It takes some knowhow with statistics to work with their software and make sense of it all, but there is a quick report option that will give you some basic stuff. there are two tag arrays in the river above salmon, one at 8 mile and one half a dozen miles upstream or so. these arrays are also very useful for steelhead fishing. it is really suprising how early fish make it up there some years. the code for the arrays you will want are USE and US1.
http://www.ptagis.org/data/quick-reports...detections

if anyone wants me to send them excel spreadsheets of steelhead or chinook passage graphs and all the useful data I have gleaned from the PTAGIS site, just PM me and i would be happy to.
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[Biigfish33]

Wow, those are definitely not looking too good yet.

You'd have to think the expectations are/were higher than what's passed over LG so far. However, it seems that some years they open the upper river just to say they opened it.

Do the upper river fish usually show up later than this?
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[Finchaser6769]

Just out of curiosity,....Are those numbers the actual numbers of fish that have come over or number of pit tagged fish. If I am not mistaken, a very small percentage of fish have a pit tag. If those are actual pit tagged fish and not an estimate I believe the number of fish over LG are exponentially better than we think. Either way I think we are in for a great year if the water cooperates.

I think a lot of Upper river fish may be near the mouth of the Grand Ronde waiting for flows to Cooperate. Time will tell
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[Huntsman]

Finchaser is correct. Only a small percentage of upper River fish, or any run of Idaho's anadromous fish, are PIT tagged. After a conversation with the Clearwater regional anadromous fishery mgr, I was led to believe that most of the upper River fish are still below the Little Salmon River confluence.

On June 2nd, IDFG tracked 5 specific, upper River fish carrying transmitters. 3 of those fish were way below the LS confluence, while 2 were holding at the Slide Rapid. This is actually good news, as it will give our upper River a chance to clear, and the water levels to drop before the fish arrive.

On the other hand, after I voiced a concern on IDFG's "Fish Talk", regarding the concern of our upper River fish being "thumped" by the down-river interests, we were told that the upper river fish migrate "far later" than the fish that are being caught in the Little Salmon River/Lower Main Salmon River fish. According to the PIT tag data of fish coming over Lower Granite, we're seeing evidence that this claim is not true. The fish currently coming over LG are very mixed, as to their destination.

This is the same "battle" that the old timers fought, regarding lower river interests hammering the upper river fish, before we get a chance to fish....
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