There seems to be a few misconceptions of what has or will be happening on the Squamish this fall. While I can not say for certain what will transpire, I feel that with over 20 years of living in Squamish and fishing this system I have a pretty good sense of the watershed. First off, the 2003 flood. This flood hit on Oct. 15 and was huge with flows in excess of 100 000 CFS of water. Everthing moved! That being said, the chum arrived after the flood and spawned in November in a lot of degraded mainriver habitat. Lots of the gravel was still unstable and that may have contributed to a lower return in 2007 ( most Squamish chum are 4 year old fish). However large numbers spawned in stable habitat in the groundwater spawning channels situated through out the watershed. A good example was Tenderfoot Creek, a Cheakamus tributary. This stream had over 12000 wild chum spawner's and was fairly indicative of most of the groundwater channels. In 2007 the return year from that spawn, about 10 %+ of the brood returned which was about 1100 fish. That was also fairly indicative of the watershed as a whole. Obviously something other than just the flood was in play. Many other south coast and central coast streams had similar chum returns. What was extremely poor this year was the chinook returns which were impacted by the flood, low ocean survivals and the CN Rail spill.
CN Rail spill: Spill happened in Aug 5 2005 and heavily impacted coho, steelhead and chinook juveniles. The coho return from the spill was in 2007 ( 2004 juveniles were in the river at the time of the spill). Pink salmon returns in 2005 and 2007 are still reduced from both the 2003 flood and the caustic soda spill. Chinook returns are poor and will contine to be for at least 2 more years as the adults vary between 2 and 5 years of age at return. Hopefully rebuilding will start becoming evident after that. Chinook returns this year were a disaster for the watershed ( less than 20 adult chinook total seen on the Ashlu this summer by a very experienced stream walker). Steelhead returns from the spill will be this winter. Will be interesting to see how devastated they were.
This brings us to this fall. Still on the early side yet for any significant chum numbers but what has been happening in other spots. Kitimat: Chum sport fishery closed and hatchery not able to get broodstock. That was unheard of! Bella Coola: chum sport fishery closed and only 1 very small commercial opening. Very few chum in the river. Central Coast: I have a friend who go's on a Central Coast heli trip every year and has for many years and fish's many of those mid coast streams. This year and last he has seen very few chum when other years they were ram jammed full in these same rivers. Some of these streams now only have hundreds of fish were there should be tens of thousands. So what is going to happen in Squamish? Your guess is as good as mine but I think were in for another dismal chum return. Hopefully I'm wrong!
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Topic: Squamish (Read 4394 times)