[OneLoyalAmerican]

Greetings FloridaGeezer, FReepers, et al:
The latest count is about 33,000 dead fish. Most of those come from the fall chinook run, which before the kill was estimated to come in at 60,000 fish. But some of the dead are steelhead and threatened coho salmon

Seems like the watermelon boy needs to watch more Discovery Channel than MTV? Chinook, coho, and steelhead are semelparous (spawn only once and then die).

[OneLoyalAmerican]

Imagine that, an enviromentalist wacko, thought the spawn cycle die off was irrigation waterflow related. The watermelon crowd. Green on the outside, red and seedy on the inside.

[marsh2]

steelhead are not a salmon. They are a trout and can go out, come in to spawn and go out again.

Was at the coho negotiating meeting all day. Last year's (winter 2002) coho run was low, but a lot of people refused usual entry for fish counts because they were mad at the state coho listing.

As they are pretty much a 3 year age class - with VERY few 2 year jacks. This means that their offspring coming back in three years would be low. 2001 was a good year and their offspring will be back in 2 years for an anticipated good run. You can't compare coho from year to year for trend.

Chinook comes back at 2, 3, 4 years so comparing runs from year to year for trends is more credible.