Willits News
By Jennifer Poole
February 17, 2012

The Eel River Recovery Project reports that the 2011 fall run of Chinook salmon on the Eel River was “another record-breaker” at the Van Arsdale Fish Station.

The first of 2,436 Chinook that jumped over the Van Arsdale Dam and spawned in the 12 miles of habitat below Scott Dam and Pillsbury Reservoir was counted on October 16. This was a new high since records began to be kept at Van Arsdale in 1946/47. Last year’s fall Chinook run was also a record-breaker, with 2,315 salmon counted.

“Steelhead and chinook right now seem to be experiencing fairly major resurgences,” said fisheries biologist Pat Higgins, who has helped organize the EERP. Higgins says improved salmon counts on the Eel, “in a nutshell,” are a result of high water flows in the spring during five of the last seven years, a reduction of the pike minnow population, good ocean conditions, and “not much fishing pressure.”

High flows get the salmon past the pike minnows, also known as squawfish, Higgins said, and high flows and wet conditions also tend to suppress the pike minnow population.

Future climate cycles, Higgins said, may be “less helpful,” making it important to restore salmons’ fresh water habitat, “to help these fish to be more resistant to changes in ocean conditions and flows.”

The Eel River Recovery Project is a new grassroots effort to help citizens monitor and report Eel River water quality and fish runs and to share information on how to protect and restore the river.

These citizen fish reporters gave eyewitness reports of widespread Chinook spawning throughout the Eel River watershed, which was also documented by California Department of Fish and Game surveys. This is “more good news,” Higgins commented.

There have been no official Eel River basin-wide estimates of Chinook population since 1955-58, the EERP report said, “but there are indications the 2011 population spawning in the wild may rival the annual average of 24,000 spanners found at that time.”

Historical accounts have Chinook salmon entering the Eel River estuary as early as August 25, but in 2011, very few Chinook were seen in the estuary before the early October rains in 2011. After that, the fish came in waves, with citizens along the Eel reporting schools of fish from October through December.

Out at Hearst, on the Eel River east of Willits, June Rickman and Jerry Albright saw Chinook salmon “spawning on every riffle for nearly a month after Thanksgiving,” the report says, “with bald eagles dining on carcasses after the mating ritual was complete.”
Bob Barsotti sighted Chinook salmon spawning in Ten Mile Creek near Laytonville on the Black Oak Ranch. “Although Chinook salmon were counted by Fish & Game in lower Outlet Creek, there wasn’t enough flow to get them into headwater tributaries above Willits, like Baechtel Creek,” according to the report.

Anybody interested in becoming a citizen monitor or who wants to report on a local salmon run should check out the Eel River Recovery Project’s website at www.eelriverrecovery.org or leave a message at 223-7200.

Original source