Bonneville Fish Hatchery- Week Three

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

We’ve been volunteering at the hatchery now for three weeks. Weather is highly variable with some days in the high 70’s, some record setting days at 105 degrees! Gads, this is the Pacific Northwest and the high temperatures were 20 degrees higher than at our home in the high desert, Reno.

On top of that we were treated to wildfire smoke eminating from our neighbors to the north, British Columbia. The Air Quality Index pegged at 193 which is unhealthy air especially for “sensitive groups”- such as us older folks. We limited our work on unhealthful air days to less strenuous tasks. The air was really ugly, smoke masking the beautiful cliffs and bluffs that line the Columbia River Gorge to the point where they completely disappeared

We were very surprised to see so many families marching around the hatchery in that smoke as youngsters are also included in the “sensitive groups” category. It seems like most of them had attended the Pacific Crest Trail Days at Marine Park in Cascade Locks. The event draws a lot of folks with over 100 vendors offering outdoor recreation products and attendees are invited to participate in activities, games, presentations, gear raffles and listen to live music. The event is free to all comers and draws a lot of folks- even when air quality is in the toilet!

Hugh has a new seasonal helper. Haley will take some of the load off of Hugh and us volunteers. She seems to be a hard worker and gets a lot done. One of the things she did was take a big pile of cut limbs that Hugh had stacked up behind the duck pond, cut them into manageable pieces and transport them to the dumpster. Those limbs would have gone to the burn pile a few years ago but Oregon Depatment of Transportation asked the hatchery not to burn as the smoke distracted the drivers on Interstate 84. Anyhow, the big deciduous leaves on those limbs had dried and when Haley drove them over to the dumpster a lot, no, a whole lot of those leaves had dislodged and spread all over the clean pavement. We were off duty when that happened. By the next morning all the leaves had been blown onto the grass so Hugh could collect them with the large ride-on lawn mower while he mowed the lawn..

We had some excitement recently- a Salmon Rodeo! Yep, you read that right. The hatchery has been short handed with one member out with an injury and another loaned to Cascade Hatchery. Normally the water channels, the fish ladder and the holding ponds would all be ready to receive returning fall run salmon but not this time. Several hundred salmon returned to Tanner Creek only to find the fish ladder dry as a bone so they jumped over the weir and swam upstream a ways. So it was all hands on deck to ready the hatchery for their arrival which included borrowing some folks from Cascade Hatchery. The “rodeo” began in the morning. The fish folks went up Tanner Creek to the hatchery property line with nets and pushed the fish back down past the weir. A couple of “pushes” and most of the salmon had been pushed downstream from the weir at which time the electric fence was energized prohibiting the salmon from swimming upstream again. Today salmon are swimming up the fish ladder and congregating in the lower pool as designed.

So other than our routine 4 days on, 4 off and a couple of 4 mile runs into Cascade Locks for minor grocery shopping, into Wood Village 20 miles west for some serious grocery shopping at a nice Walmart and across the river to Stevenson Pharmacy for prescription refills, the “salmon rodeo”, the heat and wildfire smoke from Canada have been the highlights thus far.

So until our next post, Adios!