Outdoor Journal - One fish, twice the reward One fish, twice the reward freeman foto David Pease holds a spring chinook salmon he is about to recycle Tuesday into the upper Rogue River at TouVelle State Park. The recycling of excess Cole Rivers Hatchery fish are returned to the upper Rogue to give anglers another chance to catch them. Pease is a Cole Rivers Hatchery technician whose main task this week is making anglers happy. He is taking excess spring chinook from hatchery holding ponds and ferrying them by truck 25 miles downstream for release back into the Rogue. That makes these fish, and Pease, well-received.
People love it.
There s 375 more spring chinook salmon to love in the upper Rogue this week as the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife kicks off this year s version of the great salmon recycling program. Agency biologists expect to recycle 2,000 excess hatchery spring chinook this year, with all the salmon released at the TouVelle State Park boat ramp. The hope is that a second run through the upper Rogue salmon fishery will lead to the fish getting caught instead of showing up in hatchery ponds. Hatchery biologists estimate that close to half the recycled chinook were caught last year by anglers during their second upstream swim. The ODFW used to recycle excess spring chinook during the hey-day runs of the Rogue in the 1980s.