Latest Chinook salmon Stories

One of the Puget Sound's key populations of sockeye salmon will receive a major boost from the reconstruction of the world's only successful system for moving juvenile fish around a large, deep-water hydropower dam. "A lot of people and organizations have invested years of research and planning to develop this new facility," said Cary Feldmann, manager of Resource Sciences for Puget Sound Energy (PSE). "We believe it holds great promise for salmon in the Baker and Skagit river basins."...

CHINOOK LANDING, Ore. -- On his first cast of the season, Jim Walker pitched a lure resembling a baby salmon into the dark green waters of the Columbia River and - BAM! - hooked a 24-inch fish with a $4 bounty on its head.But alas, "we didn't hook another one all day," the 73-year-old retiree said.It may not always be easy, but fishermen who can fill their coolers can also fill their pockets - some getting nearly $40,000 - for helping to control the most voracious predator of baby...

By Teresa Carson PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) - Federal regulators recommended on Friday severely scaling back salmon fishing this year along most of the Oregon and Northern California coastline to preserve shrinking Chinook salmon populations. The recommendation from the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a quasi federal-state agency, would restrict salmon fishing along the 700-mile (1,127 kilometre) stretch of coastline for most of May, June and July. If approved by the National...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Federal regulators voted Thursday to severely restrict salmon fishing off the coasts of Oregon and Northern California this summer to protect dwindling populations in the Klamath River.The Pacific Fishery Management Council decided to close most of the 700 miles of coastline to commercial salmon fishing for much of May, June and July, the most productive months of the season, which runs from April-October. Federal fishery officials said the closures were the broadest...

SEATTLE -- The killer whales that chase salmon in this region's inland waters feed almost exclusively on chinook, to the extent that the orca population ebbs and flows right along with that of the West Coast's largest and longest-lived salmon, researchers said Tuesday.The whales settle for chum salmon for six to eight weeks in the fall, when most of the chinook are gone, John Ford of Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans said at the 2006 Symposium on Southern Resident Killer Whales, a...

CASCADE LOCKS, Ore. -- In his way, C404 is kind of cute, with those sea-lion whiskers, soft brown eyes and furry little head. But to many he is a sea lion either from hell - or from Harvard.C404 has driven the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Bonneville Dam to near distraction as he and his ilk sit at the base and munch salmon gathered to continue upriver to spawn.Numerous sea lions head for the dam each spring, but C404 is in a class by himself.He has figured out how to get into fish ladders...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- An overflow of volcanic ash, rocks, water and ice from Mount Chiginagak was the cause for a puzzling absence of fish in King Salmon River this season, scientists said. A 1,300-foot-wide crater lake near the summit gushed through its glacial rim earlier this summer, said volcanologist Janet Schaeffer. The water remains so acidic that it would kill fish and be unrecognizable to salmon looking for home, said state commercial fishing biologist Paul Salomone, with the...

SEATTLE (AP) -- Last year, about 200,000 thousand Lake Washington sockeye salmon, about half the run, vanished between the Ballard Locks and their spawning grounds. This year it's even worse. Scientists say they'll be lucky if 100,000 sockeye make it to the locks from a run previously estimated at 398,000 fish. "We should be getting 10,000, 20,000 fish a day, and we're getting 1,000 to 2,000," said Mike Mahovlich, a fish biologist with the Muckleshoot Tribe. "We've lost 90...

CORVALLIS, Ore. "“ Researchers have discovered that a parasite carried by an invasive species of minnow is responsible for the dramatic declines and localized extinctions of a different minnow species in Europe during the past 40 years.This parasite, which scientists have found can almost totally destroy the spawning success of the small sunbleak minnow, Leucaspius delineatus, may pose threats to the diversity and stability of freshwater ecosystems, and is genetically very similar to a...

SEATTLE (AP) -- As many as 200,000 sockeye salmon disappeared last year between the Ballard Locks and spawning grounds above Lake Washington. Scientists suspect rising water temperatures could be the culprit. The signs were there early on. At the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, which separate Lake Washington and Puget Sound, Mike Mahovlich saw salmon carcasses surface belly-up when water rose in the locks, and dying salmon lay gasping on rocks on the saltwater side. "In my 15 years there was...