Salmon Back Home In Spokane

The salmon can come back to Spokane by the thousands as they have done for thousands of years.

The three minute film, A Short Taxi Ride Home, shows how this can be done today.
The film Salmon Fishing At Wamapum Dam showst salmon fishing at Wamapum Dam on the Columbia River and what it takes to taxi the salmon from Chief Joseph Dam to Spokane.
Salmon's Dam View - From Pacific Ocean is a film of the Columbia River dams as the Salmon make their annual return home from the Pacific Ocean.

Below is a map of the 9 dams on the Columbia River that salmon swim beyond each year on their way home to Spokane. They swim 545 miles up the Columbia River to Chief Joseph Dam, where they can not find a way to go the remaining 100 plus miles to Spokane. A closer view of the Columbia River WA dams shows more details.

Both chinook and sockeye salmon can return to Spokane.

Here's what these and other related salmon look like. Here is how some salmon are identified. Millions of hatchery salmon are released each year in to the Columbia River. These salmon have their small dorsal fin clipped so they can be easily distinguished from the all too few remaining wild salmon - see drawing.

Salmon Back Home is an independent all volunteer effort for anyone interested in helping allow the salmon back to their home in Spokane. Your help can make all the difference in the world in bringing the salmon from Chief Joseph Dam to Spokane. Contact 

If there is anyone that can catch - live - a few salmon, even one, at Chief Joseph and transport them back to Spokane in a tank of cool water to be released at the confluence of Latah and the Spokane river this can be filmed. Contact

Here are more films about the importance of salmon back home in Spokane.

Links:
http://Home.SalmonBackHome.com - Home
http://Films.SalmonBackHome.com  - Films
Contact

Film: Salmon Back Home In Spokane - A Short Taxi Ride

Road Trip - Bringing The Salmon Back Home

Here's an idea - recent suggestion:

Road Trip - Bringing The Salmon Back Home

I would like to see a film with a group actually catching and releasing salmon in Latah. 

Sort of a road trip. 

Taxi salmon may take some know how and seeing someone actually doing it would be helpful. 

You could get into the spirit of the thing with a caravan of cars carrying salmon with people talking and doing things. 

How big are the salmon? 

How long in water container can they survive? 

When is the best time to catch them?

Have a good time.

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 Here's some answers to the questions:

Hopefully the films and website get the idea across and some people take a look at the website and a couple realize they can contribute to this and do so.

Good idea for a 'Taxi' caravan - salmon road trip.

It would be incredible to make a film on the people on the trip driving by the dams without fish passage and their comments, and the comments about how different it would be if the salmon were back in Spokane like they now are in Brewster, Omak, Oroville, Osoyoos.

Boom time for the salmon on the Okanogan River - to most everyone's amazement. The started coming back in larger quantities in the late 90's.

The salmon are at Chief Joseph now - thousands each day...  Through September or so. The sockeye run starts in late June.

Here are more photos of salmon, salmon fishing and more.

Lots of salmon fishing at Chief Joseph between Brewster and Bridgeport at Chief Joseph from July through September. Brewster has started a big Salmon Festival when the Salmon return each year.

The people that catch the salmon know how to catch them to eat - bet, some would know how to keep them alive. Apparently Sockeye can be very lively when caught and brought on shore or into the boat.
Catching and moving salmon hundreds of miles, more than 5 hours in the container, has been done with success. The trick is to keep the water cool. Salmon don't do well as the water gets warm.

Sockeye are 15 to 30 pounds or so, 18 to 24 inches or more. Chinook can be double that - size and weight - probably.

If you know of anyone(s) with a big water container, pickup/truck that would be a great start. Need some people that know how to catch salmon. It would be great to have some women, in addition to the men, catching a big one and along with others bring them live back to Spokane to return to where Latah meets Spokane.

It would be a great road trip - that next road trips could repeat for years.

The salmon certainly would appreciate it - so would the entire Spokane region.

Salmon’s Dam View - From Pacific Ocean To Spokane

View the Columbia River dams as the Salmon make their annual return home from the Pacific Ocean. They swim past the 4 dams along the border of Oregon and Washington. 

On past the toxic Hanford Nuclear Reactors and the legacy of atomic bomb building including the nuclear bomb exploded over Nagasaki Japan killing over 40,000 men, women, and children. 

The salmon swim past another 5 dams on their way home to Spokane. At the 10th dam, Chief Joseph Dam the Salmon find no way to swim beyond Chief Joseph - This dam does not yet have fish passage. 

How can the salmon get back home to Spokane, simple. Take a short 125 mile taxi ride the rest of the way home.

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Tags: Salmon, Sockeye, Chinook, King Salmon, Coho, Fish Ladders, Dams, Columbia River, Spokane River,  Chief Joseph Dam, Pacific Ocean, Hanford, Nagasaki, Brewster, Bridgeport, Chief Joseph Dam, Wells Dam

Salmon Fishing At Wamapum Dam

Celilo Falls - Echo of Water Against Rocks

The Mighty Columbia River - 1947 Educational Documentary

Many kids growing up along the Columbia River sang Woody Guthries famous " Roll On Columbia, Roll On. Here's Woody singing the full song, with photos along the 1,200 miles of river. http://youtu.be/20ZffI6by3A

I doubt many of the kids learned all the verses, or much of the history Woody refers to of along the river. Nor much about the great salmon runs and the people who have fished them each year for thousands of years along the Columbia.

Celilo Falls - More History

Here too:
http://youtu.be/cCYhQa4sR_o

Celilo Falls, Oregon - 1956 - In Color

And here are views from 1932:
http://youtu.be/Wf4h9YPDcDg

Hatchery Salmon Identification