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Late Breaking Fish News:
Over the past few years the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has been diving to count fish down-river of Cape Horn Dam on the Mainstem Eel River almost to the confluence with the Middle Fork. The divers repeadedly found summer steelhead. PG&E had stopped its own counting of fish below the dams in 1983, claiming no steelhead in that part of the river. But the fish remained there none the less. Last year PG&E dove with NMFS, and again steelhead were counted. This means that the inadequate Biological Opinion submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by NMFS will have to be changed, need at least 17 cfs. in the latter part of the summer. Since this is a particularly wet water year we are likely to see more natural late-summer flows up to 30 or 35 cfs. By the way, this is the inadequate Biological Opinion we have been fighting in the courts.

Note from Alan Grass, CA Fish & Game, at the fish ladder fish counting station on Cape Horn Dam, also called the Van Arsdale reservoir:

“We trapped our last steelhead on May 2. The Chinook daily data sheets have been checked and these are the final Chinook numbers. The steelhead data sheets will get a final audit soon and I’ll run the steelhead trap for a few more days--but these are most likely the final fish numbers for the 2005-06 season.”

725 Chinook (335 males, 320 females, 70 jacks)
249 Steelhead (57 males, 124 females and 68 half-pounders)