Ash Creek Images
Photographs of the West by Doug Gorsline
Fall Chinook Fishing at the Mouth of Eagle Creek above Bonneville Dam
During the first two weeks of September, the fall chinook salmon run peaks at Bonneville dam. Many of these fish are 'upriver brights' returning to Drano Lake at the mouth of the Little White Salmon River, where a federal fish hatchery is located. Others are 'tule' chinook returning to the Spring Creek Hatchery, also operated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Fall chinook are not the easiest fish to catch. They stop feeding as soon as they enter fresh water. Most of their energy is directed toward rapidly moving upriver and spawning. Their bodies are going through rapid transformations that will lead to their deaths in just a few weeks, just after they've spawned. I didn't see any fish caught on the evening that I took this photo, even though there were fish rolling frequently.
The gridwork seen in the background is part of the superstucture of the original Bonneville Dam powerhouse, completed in the late 1930s. Here, power is collected from the individual generators and transferred into the high voltage BPA powerlines that will move it into the electrical power grid that supplies Oregon, Washington, and Nortern California.
