Day 57, Thursday, August 11

After a lazy morning of doing laundry and packing a lunch, I headed down river to the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. I wanted to see the dam but was surprised and pleased to see that there was a fish hatchery at the same location. I, of course, went to the fish hatchery first because I, well, because, um, … Heck because fish hatcheries are cool. Fish hatcheries to me bring back childhood memories of summers spent in the mountains of Western North Carolina. We used to go to the trout fish hatcheries on the Davidson River to gawk at the massive size of the Rainbow and Brook Trout breed stock. Even when you’re not fishing it still makes your blood boil to see a 25 lb trout splashing at the surface for feed pellets thrown in the water. There was actually a story, the validity of which I can’t verify, of one old guy who used to take advantage of the fish hatchery. He’d rigged up a special fishing line through his pants and would go stand by the side of some of the outdoor tank, drop his line down beside his boot, hoist a trout up into his pantleg and walk off with dinner. Like I said, I don’t know if it’s true but it makes a good story to tell a child!
Back to the Columbia River, and the Bonneville Dam… The Bonneville Dam fish hatchery hatches not only trout, but also salmon and sturgeon. It was the latter that I really wanted to see. I’ve seen trout and salmon before but the chance to see breed stock sturgeon fascinated me. The hatchery didn’t disappoint! They had a pond of gigundous (yes, that’s a valid word, in this case) sturgeon. Their biggest fish was a 65 year old named Herman which was over 10 feet long and more than 450 pounds! Seeing that fish through the viewing window set at water level, it was difficult to even imagine that those fish can actually attain sizes of over 20 feet and significantly over 1000 pounds! Apparently young sturgeon are actually incredible game fish when caught on a rod and reel and are known for their aerobatics like Tarpon in Florida. Very, Very cool!
After I’d gotten my fill of the hatchery, I headed over to the hydroelectric dam. Several years ago, a good family friend in North Carolina, Mr. Oliver, gave me a personalized, behind the scenes tour (the engineer version, not the tourist version) of the Bad Creek hydroelectric dam near Lake Toxaway. That tour was amazing but this time I only planned to see the exterior of the dam. That was interesting, but what I’d not counted on was getting to see the salmon steps. I realize the salmon stairs are sort of an afterthought behind generating electricity, but still they’re really cool. The steps aren’t as simple as they seem. In fact there are several stages of the stairs. They go from gates with holes in them to true stairs to a funnel where the fish are counted (more on that in a minute) to a series of s-shaped flumes. I didn’t see any salmon going over the stairs, but the dam actually has several windows looking into the side of the s-shaped flumes where visitors get to watch the salmon and other fish swimming by. Some how, it’s seriously fascinating watching as wild salmon and trout, some of them HUGE, swim by. In the same general area as the public viewing stages is the official fish counter. I realize this is an environmentally important job but my GOD it would be boring.. The person just sits there and pushed a button on a keyboard that looks for the world like an old fashioned cash register, with one button for each species of fish. What an amazingly tedious job. It could convert an avid fisherman into a fish hater!