Wednesday March 12, 2025
KPQ —
Imagine floating a boat along a one-mile section of the Columbia River for an afternoon of fishing and casting a line into waters where over 12,000 salmon are happily swimming.
It’s a mathematical equation that might seem like an angler’s dream, but it’s not at all mythology…or at least it didn’t used to be.
Prior to the construction of dams like Chief Joseph, Rocky Reach, and the mighty Grand Coulee on the Columbia River during the 1930s and 1950s, historical biologists estimate there were anywhere between 10 million to 16 million salmon moving through the basin’s 13,000 miles of water annually.
That natural bounty of fish was more than enough to sustain the populations of numerous Indigenous tribes in the region who lived along the river and relied upon it for their livelihoods and survival.