The rains have flooded Carkeek with salmon once again. At the Tuesday survey volunteers spotted 154(!) live salmon. Thank you volunteers for braving the storm last Saturday and the storm of salmon today. Now let’s dig into the numbers.
| Survey_Date | live_chum_count | dead_chum_count | live_coho_count | dead_coho_count | live_cutthroat_count |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-10-17 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2023-10-18 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2023-10-21 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| 2023-10-24 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 |
| 2023-10-28 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| 2023-10-31 | 8 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| 2023-11-04 | 11 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2023-11-07 | 146 | 25 | 2 | 9 | 2 |
note: not displayed on this table are the salmon whose species we could not identify
A handful of salmon last week became over a hundred this week. Since it’s early in the season we’re seeing mostly live fish. After a slow start we’re about on pace with the last two years of surveys.
This year’s new change for the fish has been the beaver dams around 250 feet up Piper’s Creek. There’s been a lot of concern among visitors that the fish won’t be able to pass the sturdy dams. Surveys before Tuesday had shown that was mostly the case but the heavy rains over the weekend helped many of the salmon pass the dams. We’ve now seen salmon at their typical spawning places further upstream with some reaching 2000 feet up Piper’s Creek. 54 of the 154 live salmon spotted on Tuesday (35%) had reached past 300 feet and we expect that number to increase. With salmon spending more time in the lower reaches we’ve noticed slightly more redds (egg nests) reported in the first few hundred feet of stream than in previous years. Check out the attached report for more details.