First Salmon
It’s 4:50 a.m. and I’m perched on a rock along the South Fork Salmon River, fishing pole in hand.
Your best chance to catch a salmon, says Dave, is to be the first line in the hole. It seems crazy to be stumbling around in the dark just to secure a fishing spot, but I trust Dave. He works for Idaho Fish and Game and has fished for salmon with his daughter, Madeleine, for years.
Shadowy forms carrying fishing poles clamber past us along the bank in search of their own fishing hole. Dave pauses in his rigging every so often to confer with fellow anglers. He’s excited to teach me how to fish. Dave and I are both passionate advocates for salmon recovery in Idaho, but this is the first time I’ve held a salmon fishing rod in my hand.
We hear that few people have caught fish lately, but a number of us are trying our luck anyhow. Fishing opens at 5:37, and at 5:39 a.m. we start casting, with barely enough light to see where our lines land in the inky blue current.
I don’t expect any of us to catch anything right away, but by 5:50 Madeleine has a bite.
Dave scrambles for the net. “It’s a jack, it’s a jack!” he says. Madeleine is just nineteen, but she’s caught eight or nine salmon over the years. That’s pretty good in Idaho, where salmon seasons have been severely limited and fish are few.
Like a true fisherman’s daughter, Madeleine lands a feisty jack chinook with ease. Dave’s grin is huge. “That’s my girl, Madeleine, that’s my girl!” he repeats. Jack salmon—male fish that return after just one year in the ocean—are not as big as typical adult fish. But Madeleine’s jack is beautiful—spotted and robust, with a crimson streak down his side.
Excited now, we all return to our spots and resume casting.
I’m about to reel in another too-short cast when I feel a tug on my line. Another snag, I think, and reel in a bit more. The snag tugs back. Then, seeing a silver flash in the river I realize—
“I’ve got one! I’ve got one!”
I have no idea how to land a salmon, so Madeleine dashes to my side to shout directions—“Get your rod pointed upstream—no, no upstream, not downstream, reel in a little . . . not too much!”
From the corner of my eye I see Dave flying around on the bank, grabbing the net. I reel in a little more and get a look at my fish—it’s big! And it’s fighting. My rod bends, my arms ache, and I wonder if this is one of those sports where it takes hours to land your fish.
But Dave is promptly ready with the net. I follow his instructions to land the fish, and in one swift movement he scoops up my salmon. “It’s a female. She’s a big one!” says Dave. We all clamber in a circle and look at her. She’s a beautiful hatchery fish—spotted and luminescent and just a little scarred from her long journey.
Everyone is patting me on the back, yelling “Good job!” But I can’t stop looking at her—my first salmon! She’s twice as big as any fish I’ve ever landed. She was hatched in these waters; she’s traveled through eight major dams and reservoirs, to the ocean and back, over 1,400 miles. And I caught her! What a salmon! What a river!
I start to hike up the bank to punch my salmon tag, which I’d accidentally left in the car. But my legs are wobbly, so I stop halfway up to sit. The canyon is beautiful and wild, the river murmuring and clear. I am blessed to be here, to catch this miraculous fish, to live in Idaho. I realize that my experience—so personal and meaningful to me—is not unique . . . and shouldn’t be.
People have been fishing for salmon in Idaho for centuries. But since there are so few salmon today, anglers are confined to tiny stretches of river to fish for hatchery-bred salmon. We should be able to fish for salmon on over 1,000 river miles in Idaho!
I’m suddenly aware of all we have lost to the lower Snake River dams. Over ten thousand generations of fish, wild Snake River salmon have evolved to climb higher and swim farther than any other salmon species in the world—a journey of up to 950 miles gaining 6,500 feet in elevation.
But in one human generation, the four lower Snake River dams have reduced a population of over 150,000 wild chinook to less than 10,000 returning adults.
Meanwhile the generation that remembers an abundance of salmon—the old timers who recall when there were so many wriggling chinook returning to the Salmon River that it seemed you could walk across their shiny backs—are getting old. Our fishing teachers are fading.
Before today, I had a deep appreciation for Idaho’s salmon because of their importance to ecosystems that I love. I’ve been fighting for salmon because of the immense natural loss that extinction would bring. Now I feel the tug of an angler’s line at my spirit, and realize what a cultural loss salmon extinction would bring, as well. Sitting high above the river, tears come to my eyes.
How did we let it get this bad?
To reverse this loss, the four lower Snake River dams that kill most of Idaho’s salmon need to come down. It’s the right thing to do—for our natural and our cultural heritage. There are alternatives to the little energy and transportation options those dams provide. Such benefits can be replaced. But there is no replacement for a species that migrates higher and farther than any other in the world. There is no replacement for the cultural narratives that are threatened along with the salmon—those narratives that we cast from one generation to the next, from fishing teacher to novice angler.
Someday I’d like to take my grandchildren salmon fishing and tell them the story of how I caught my first salmon, on my first day of salmon fishing. But I hope that I can one day recount my own story as part of the larger narrative of salmon recovery, rather than as a lament for a mighty species that we allowed to fade away.
Amanda Peacher is a master’s student focusing on environmental writing in the environmental studies program at the University of Oregon. She is from Boise, Idaho, where she has worked as a freelance writer since 2005. Peacher has also worked as an environmental organizer to restore wild salmon and as a wilderness ranger in the backcountry of Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains.
