Chinook Salmon Counts Skyrocket in Idaho

I love fishing. I grew up in Tucson Arizona where there is not much water but we had a little cabin and my grandmother lived up in The White Mountains. Just down the hill from the little neighborhood was a stocked fishing pond. While this isn't the serene and peaceful fishing that I enjoy now as an adult it was the perfect place to get my little fishing feet wet as a little one. I learned the basics and grew a love for it right there in that little stocked pond with dozens of other families all around.

I have done some spectacular deep sea fishing when I lived in Alaska for Halibut and for Salmon and in rivers and lakes in Oregon and here in Idaho, so far I have fished Red Fish Lake in Stanley, a few places off the Snake River and the Boise River right off downtown on the greenbelt. This next summer, mark my words I will be out exploring, adventuring and fishing more and more.

Idaho Fish and Game do annual aerial (via helicopter) Chinook Salmon survey. This happens in the Frank Church - River of No Return Wilderness. Every year biologists study about 460 miles of waterway that is most likely to be in areas where the Chinook will spawn. The Chinook Salmon redds are what the nests are called where the adult salmon dig and place their 'red colored' eggs to later be hatched. The helicopter biologists count these and add them to the counts that are also gotten from biologists on the ground near the river and waterways.

This all leads to a greater understanding of how to continue to have a safe habitat as they have naturally kept their population up in the area for thousands of years with nearly no human help. While 2020 has been rough on humans, the fish seem to be thriving this year. Last year the numbers were incredibly low, the lowest since 1995 in fact. However, this year the count was way way up with 467 redds (egg nests) spotted from biologists.

Now its time for those little swimming buddies to get all nice and big so I can catch em :)