Stanley

One day during the Sun Valley trip we headed through the mountains over to Stanley where many tributaries comprise the headwaters of the Salmon River which runs through Stanley before winding its way over 400 miles to the Snake River. The Snake River then drains into the Columbia River which drains into the ocean. We did not do any fishing while in the Salmon River drainage, however we did visit the fish hatchery there which was the highlight of the trip. There were a few holding areas with stocker rainbows waiting to be planted in the region. Then there were several holding areas where tiny chinook (king) salmon were being raised up to a certain size before they are put in the river to make their journey back to the ocean during spring runoff. Many of these tiny salmon were near the end of the holding pen where a small current comes in and they were trying to jump up and over a plastic barrier. There are some wild salmon that do return to the upper Salmon but they are few in numbers. In fact I think the number of wild returning sockeye was in the single digits last run. I believe there are still wild chinook that return but their numbers are most likely fairly low too, probably not as low as the sockeye though. It is an amazing phenomenon for fish to travel around a thousand miles upstream to spawn whether they be wild or not. After seeing the juvenile fish we drove over to the far side of the hatchery near the river to see the adult chinook in the holding pens. It was awesome to see the big salmon cruising back and forth and imagining them on the end of your line. I then went over to see a small latter system that had water spilling over at different levels. The fish were jumping up and trying to proceed further into the concrete system of the hatchery. I think they manually let the fish in each day or maybe just net them and throw them into the holding area. Regardless of how it is exactly done it was sure fun to see the fish leaping and smacking themselves against a rubber mat that was placed there to avoid injury. Some of them would pull an easy six foot vertical jump, very impressive. Then I went over to the river where there was a small spillover dam barely downstream of the ladders. If you kept your eyes glued there for about thirty seconds you would usually see a salmon rocket out of the water trying to make it up the spillover. One probably caught six feet of air and traveled a good 15 feet horizontally, it was amazing. I wish I had my camera on me to capture the fish in the air but I had dropped it off at the car after seeing the fish in the holding areas, oh well. Stanley was really a beautiful area and I hope to visit it again someday!