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River Temps Dropping???

1298 Views 3 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  October Caddis
Rob or anyone over near the Columbia or Snake fishing know if river temps are dropping. Weather is sure changing fast in the NW but 75% of steelhead still in Columbia River. Right now there is only 63,000 fish between lower granite dam and ice harbor dam. On most years that's an exciting number but this year not so great. I'm not going to complain because almost 200,000 fish have gone by lower granite dam already. But can you imagine what it will be like when the majority of fish left in the Columbia make their push up the Snake. If even half of the 500,000 steelhead still in the Columbia below the Snake R outlet right now head up to Lewiston and beyond there may be days when 20 thousand fish get counted at each of the lower dams in a day. The most I've seen reported so far was a 12,000 fish day.
Hope all of you are enjoying this abundance in all your secret spots and not so secret spots up and down the Columbia River. There sure are a lot of fish still holding in cooler water.
OC
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Totally mind-boggling!

I also hope biologists, scientists, and even meteorologists are capturing everything they can about this year as data for comparison in years to come. Maybe a special coalition of people should combine their efforts to chronicle this record run from multiple perspectives to build a "big picture" of the factors contributing to this peak return?
Down here on the upper Rogue the water temp is not 'changing' per se, as it's coming out from under a huge dam. But what we're not getting is any warming during day light hours.

About froze my butt this weekend!!!!
Fred
Thanks Fred,
Don't mind the freezing my butt off part. But if river temps didn't come down there would or will not be any fish caught over on the Snake.
Sinktip just called and said he found the water temps for the Snake near Asotin. As of yesterday 17*C, what's that 55*F?
Records show that temps were 28*C on October 1st and now 17, WOW, that should get all those fish moving and taking.
Cold nights, warm days, wakers, over 200,000 fish so far, now that's my holy Mecca!
OC
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