I’m a couple of weeks late posting about this year’s spring chinook returns to the Upper Deschutes Basin as part of the reintroduction program. Some of that is due to being careful to wait until the end of the run and some due to the fact that Portland General Electric has stopped posting the spreadsheet that shows daily counts of fish passed through the facility. As usual, however, they are very responsive and helpful when contacted and I now have the data. It’s mixed news.

The first spring chinook was captured at the Pelton trap below the three dams at the Pelton Round Butte project on May 26, 2025. The last one was on September 9, 2025. 469 spring chinook were passed from the Lower Deschutes into the upper basin above PRB. (PGE releases some spring chinook into Lake Billy Chinook and some directly into the Metolius River near Camp Sherman.) All of 469 fish were excess hatchery broodstock that that were not needed by the Round Butte Hatchery, located in the PRB project. All of the fish were raised to smolt size at the hatchery and released directly into the Lower Deschutes.

The lack of fish from above PRB is not good news but there is an explanation. 2022 was a terrible year for spring chinook (and steelhead) in the Lower Deschutes. As a result, RBH needed all the fish captured that year for breeding and subsequent smolt releases into the lower river. There were no hatchery smolts available for placement above PRB in 2023, which, of course, means no upper basin adult returns in 2025.

The good news is that this year saw enough spring chinook in the lower river to have excess hatchery broodstock placed into the upper basin. So, there is hope that natural spawning will occur and redds have been observed. (I watched a friend inadvertently catch one of this fish in the Metolius arm of Lake Billy Chinook last August.)

Side note, of the 469 chinook passed upstream, seven were adult males, 190 were adult females, and 272 were jacks. Jacks are one year old male fish that are sexually mature. Gemini says that “these smaller males are considered an “insurance policy” for the salmon population, as they provide a genetic bridge between different year classes of the run”. The RBH hatchery kept a small number of jacks for spawning, the rest were handed off to PGE for transport above the project.

Turning to fish passage data from Opal Springs Dam, very near the mouth of the Crooked River at Lake Billy Chinook, the first spring chinook was seen on May 28, 2025 (just two days after the first chinook was passed above PRB) and the last on October 4, 2025. 182 chinook passed up through the fish ladder and 74 went back down, most likely looking for a mate. There may be a little double counting in these numbers as a few fish have been known to go up and down the ladder more than once.