Wet Winter Sent Kokanee Over Dam

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has concluded that a wet winter and high water swept 90 percent of Dworshak Reservoir’s kokanee right over the dam’s spillways.

Fish and Game said Friday that an estimated 1.15 million of the small, landlocked sockeye salmon were flushed away in February, March and April. That leaves just 150,000 kokanee in the 54-mile-long reservoir for anglers to seek.

But there is a bit of good news among the bad. Anglers may see kokanee reaching 14 to 16 inches.

“It would be nice to see big kokanee, but fisherman may have to fish all day to catch one,” said Melo Maiolie, Fish and Game’s principal fishery research biologist for a Dworshak kokanee study.

It was clear last winter that thousands of fish were being washed out of the reservoir, so Fish and Game allowed anglers to salvage all the kokanee they could catch from the Clearwater River’s North Fork below the dam at Ahsahka.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates Dworshak, tried to draw water from different depths to avoid sucking the kokanee out as it made way for spring runoff.