06/05/2026
Let us Talk Salmon Biology The El Nino Echo Effect and What is Building Right Now
If you have been watching the adult passage counts over Bonneville Dam, you know it has been a tough spring. The cumulative Spring Chinook count is sitting just under 88,712 fish, which is down roughly 25 percent from last year and dragging just below the 10 year historical average.
When counts drop, it is easy to look for immediate answers on the river. But at Reel One Adventures, we look strictly at the data and the science to understand our runs, keeping things completely unbiased and free of regional politics. To see what is actually happening, we have to look back at the ocean environment from a few years ago.
Instead of looking at the river today, think about the food chain out in the Pacific three years ago.
When a major El Nino hits, like the strong one we experienced across 2023 and 2024, it pushes warm and nutrient poor water into the Pacific Northwest coast. This warm water wipes out the fatty copepods that juvenile salmon absolutely need to grow. Suddenly, our outgoing smolts are forced to survive on energy deficient subtropical bait.
Because Spring Chinook spend 2 to 4 years maturing out at sea before coming home, they take the hardest hit while they are juveniles. We do not see the impact on the river immediately. We see the echo effect years later when those missing age classes are supposed to return as mature adults. The lower numbers we are tracking right now are the direct biological aftermath of the juveniles that entered a hostile ocean during that 2023 and 2024 cycle.
Looking Ahead The Next Cycle is Already Forming
This is not just about looking backward. Right now, NOAA climate models are showing a rapid and powerful transition back into a brand new El Nino event for 2026, with ocean heat content anomalies already soaring.
What does this mean for our future springer runs? It means the juveniles heading out to sea right now are facing another tough marine environment. While we can expect our 2026 and 2027 adult returns to stay leaned out from the last cycle, this current warming trend tells us we need to be prepared for the echo effect to potentially squeeze our adult runs again by 2029 and 2030.
I will be dropping more research and videos soon, but I wanted to get this data on springers out right now since they just officially closed out the Bonneville counts for the spring season.
Want to dig into the data yourself? Facebook hates external links so we left them out. But we have a complete library of verified NOAA marine data and University of Washington DART fish counts backing this up. Shoot us a direct message and we will gladly send over the source files.
How does this data map out against what you have been experiencing on the water? Let us keep the discussion focused on the science and the fish in the comments below.
