Tuesday September 5, 2023
Yakima Herald-Republic —
Brian Saluskin spent Friday morning drifting on the Columbia River, fishing during the day’s earliest hours. A few hours later, Saluskin, a fish passage biologist for Yakama Nation Fisheries, made the drive up to Cle Elum Dam in Kittitas County.
Saluskin is the lead on efforts to reintroduce sockeye salmon to the area and has spent almost 30 years working on fish restoration in the Yakima Basin.
“This is why I do this. I come from a family of fishermen,” he said.
He and two Yakama Nation fish technicians, Kevin Seager and Seth Olney, walked across the earthen dam on a tour of the new fish passage project that’s under construction.
Yakama Nation fisheries staff have put in years of work, hauling fish to the lake, helping them breed, studying them and trying to restore populations of fish that, more than a century ago, flowed up and down the Columbia and its tributaries.