huge salmon run forcasted for Klamath and Sac rivers

[shawn kempkes]

The forcast for the fall king run on the klamath is 1.6 million fish and over 800,000 on the Sacramento river. i doubt these numbers will materialize.



http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-klamath-salmon-20120228,0,3391889.story

[weightforwardfilms]

Where do they get these numbers from? Are they counting Salmon going downstream and then questimating a percentage of returning fish?
Jeremy

[shawn kempkes]

Where do they get these numbers from? Are they counting Salmon going downstream and then questimating a percentage of returning fish?
Jeremy

To be honest I dont know. I know they come pretty close to what we actually get on puget sound. Except three years ago with the fraser sockeye collapse. The next year there were so many Sockeye heading for the Fraser alot of them never spawned because of a lack of oxygen in the waters in which they Spawn.

The huge projection for the Klamath could also mean a huge steelhead run as well if Ocean conditions are as good as they say they are. The other thing that concerns me is if they let the commies over fish these fish and then the run never materialzes.

[T-Ball]

[QUOTE=shawn kempkes;113265]The forcast for the fall king run on the klamath is 1.6 million fish and over 800,000 on the Sacramento river. i doubt these numbers will materialize.

Don't beleve everything printed in newspapers. As I understand it these forecast numbers represent the total number of fish currently in the ocean which includes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 year old age classes. The actual 2012 run will be a fraction of these estimated numbers. Also I have heard that the spawner escapment goals for these rivers has been increased by almost double from years past. The actual 2012 run estimates with harvest allocations and escapement goals are still yet to be determined/released by the PFMC.

[huntindog]

there are multiple data sources used to make these predictions but a very large portion of the model is based on the number of jacks in the system the previous year.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20120227/ARTICLES/120229596?p=2&tc=pg

[Scott Thornley]

Correct. And the formula used for creating the projections based on returning jack #'s is proving to be off - significantly. This is not just a CA problem, but is being seen in fisheries from here to AK.

As far as I know, the formula has not been changed in the past 3-4 years, which is when the discrepency really started to show. My SWAG is that we get 1/3-1/2 of the projection, but would love to be proven wrong.

Scott

[indiancreeklodge]

One element of the forecast is the number of jacks counted in the preceding year--which evidently was very high last year.