Published June 16, 2006

About the only thing you can confidently predict about the spring anadromous fish runs in the Connecticut River and elsewhere in New England is that they’re unpredictable. Other than that, it’s a crapshoot.

Many factors must be considered when analyzing the status of American shad, Atlantic salmon and other migratory fish that live in saltwater and spawn in freshwater; but once the run is under way, it all depends on the weather, which dictates river flows and temperature, the two variables that impact daily and weekly runs.

In a perfect world aimed at promoting optimal returns, I suppose the man at the controls would bring heavy March/April rains to initiate early-spring snowmelt and high river flows, followed by a gradually receding river that slowly and steadily warms from the 40s to 60s Fahrenheit, stimulates migration. Once the river temperature climbs to 60, all hell breaks loose until 68, when the fish stake out their territory and settle in for a few weeks of spawning that concludes before July. The problem is that it’s seldom that programmed and the runs vary greatly from year to year.

This year’s run is strikingly similar to least year’s. Both started early, triggered by warm, dry Aprils, then got bogged down by cool, gray, wet months of May that wreaked havoc on anadromous runs, riled the river, yo-yoed the water temperature and caused several shutdowns of the major upstream fish-passage facility in Holyoke. Last year we kept waiting for the river to settle down and clear the way for one last pulse of fish to pour through Holyoke and other lower Connecticut River stations, but that surge never materialized and probably won’t this year, either.

Yep, that’s right, I’m going out on a limb and predict that, despite the fact that river flare-ups appear to have delayed the runs big-time during the last month, it’s too late to expect that one last surge we were expecting last year at this time. It didn’t come last year and it ain’t coming this year, either.

How do I arrive at that assessment? Easy. You just get a feel for fish migration after sitting at the keyboard for a quarter century examining the same fish running up the same river year after year after year. Call it intuition or whatever you want to, but it’s proven reliable in the past and will, in most cases, remain that way in the future.

So, what we’re looking at today, is a run akin to last year’s, when 186 salmon were counted in the river and 116,511 shad passed Holyoke. Right now, the same two numbers stand at 138,323 shad, an insignificant increase, and 127 salmon, an insignificant decrease.

Yes, the Barrett Fishway has been closed about as much as it’s been open over the past 30 days, and the river temperature is still below 60. But even when the lift was open over the weekend only 2,000 and 15 salmon showed up, so why should we expect a major run later this week or next, when the sun again shines and quickly raises the water to optimal migration temps?

Chalk it up as another shad run of less than 200,000 and another salmon run of less than 200 and move on.

It is what it is.