The Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group has reached the end of the 2002-2003 salmon spawning season, and some conclusions have taken shape. An overview of the numbers plainly points out that there were not as many salmonids returning to our project streams this year as there were last season. However, comparing data from the last few years should help to understand why.
*Click here for a complete report of spawner survey results 1998-2003.

Each year SFEG staff and trained volunteers conduct spawning surveys during the winter at restoration project sites. These surveys provide an estimate of how many returning salmon are using SFEG restoration sites and how many are accessing previously blocked habitat. SFEG has assisted the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) over the last five years by supplying them with spawner counts on a few of their index streams, such as Jones Creek, Colony Creek, Mouse Creek, and Powderhouse Creek. WDFW uses these numbers along with other index stream data to determine escapement totals for the Skagit and Samish Basins. These data help to determine escapement goals for future salmon returns.

According to WDFW, this year's chum return was in the record books long before the run was over. There were enormous numbers of chum observed on the Skagit River, Samish River, and at WDFW hatcheries. Over 300,000 chum spawners were documented on the Skagit River alone. This is the most chum salmon to return to the Skagit River since 1917! WDFW indicates that this large chum run may be due to good ocean conditions combined with the lack of large floods on the Skagit during the past five years. However, in the streams surveyed by SFEG, there were approximately half the chum this year compared to last year. The probable reason for this is the low stream flows, forcing the chum salmon to spawn in the main stem rivers. The chum counts were down on four of the six streams surveyed, but they were observed for the first time in the West Fork Trumpeter Creek, in Bakerview Park. Hansen Creek's chum numbers have increased every year since we began surveys in 1998. The chum return in Alder Creek also increased from 11 live adults last year to 83 this year.

The small number of chinook recorded this year (just five carcasses and one redd) is lower than the numbers of the previous three years, but is very similar to the parent run of chinook in 1998-99. There has been a steady decline in the chinook numbers over the last two years. The only chinook salmon recorded this year were in Alder Creek and Colony Creek. This season chinook carcasses were recorded for the first time in the Colony Creek watershed since we began surveys in 1998. Hansen Creek and Jones Creek, both of which usually host the largest number of chinook, had none this year. Only one chinook redd was observed this year, and was smaller than average. All five chinook carcasses measured this year were chinook "jacks", and averaged 0.28 meters in length.

Nearly 5,000 fewer coho returned to SFEG project streams this year than last year, a 69% decrease. From the 30 project streams that host coho salmon, only six had an increase in numbers from last year. Hansen Creek had a larger coho return this year than ever recorded before (309 live adults). Coho numbers were also up in Alder Creek, West Fork Trumpeter Creek, Kennedy Creek, Colony Creek, and in Lewis Creek, which had fish in it for the first time since 1998. The kokanee count has remained steady in the Lake Samish tributaries for three years.

We observed a large increase in the number of cutthroat trout in the project streams this year. A total of 75 live cutthroat were recorded this winter, with 54 observed in Jones Creek alone. (The most cutthroat ever recorded in Jones Creek in one season was eight in 2001-02.) There was no sign of rainbow trout in any of the streams this winter. In previous years rainbow trout were observed in Hansen Creek, Childs Creek, and Jones Creek. Steelhead surveys have been conducted on SFEG project streams the past two years, and are still underway by WDFW at the time of this writing. The data have not been finalized, but the data collectors have reported that there are no fish to be counted, in contrast to 32 live adults were observed in these same streams last year.

The 2001-02 spawning season demonstrated a dramatic increase in the numbers of all salmonids, with the exception of the chinook salmon. Almost the exact opposite was true for the 2002-03 spawning season, where there was a decrease in numbers of salmonids, with the exception of the cutthroat trout.

I would once again like to thank everyone involved in making spawning surveys possible this year. Thank you Lucy Applegate for creating another great volunteer base which included volunteers Mark and Haydee Allred, Bree Yednock and Eric Dean, Brent and Suzanne Nesbitt, Todd Woodard, Ted Matts, George and Carol Harell, Lianne Koenig, Sunita Sinclair, and Brian Cook; landowners Gordon Hamerski and Pat Parker, Ken Goodpastor, Floyd Kennedy, David Gribble, and Mike Wood; AmeriCorps Intern Erin Mader; Crew Supervisor Dave Holt; Restoration Technicians Bob Keller, Dwayne Massey, and Geoff Martin; Project Manager Perry Welch; Skagit System Cooperative's Belinda Paxton; Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's Doug Huddle; and the State Street High School SKY Group. We greatly appreciate all the hard work and effort that everyone puts into this very important part of salmon recovery. Thanks, and we hope to see you all again next year.