I like to keep abreast with what's happening on the coast because it's an indicator of what's in store for us. Idaho just sent the salmon/steelhead class of 2008 to sea, which we will get back as adults over the next few years. The conditions those young fish encounter when they reach the Pacific is critical to their survival and our future salmon and steelhead runs.

Early indications look good.

According to Mike Stahlberg at the Register Guard in Eugene, Ore. there's a bumper crop of "half-pounder" steelhead in the Rogue River in southern Oregon.

Half pounders are a unique type of steelhead that enter the Pacific in the spring and feed for a few months, then turn around and return to the Rogue River. Most of them then go back to the ocean to mature and return a year later.

"Big numbers of half-pounders foreshadow a big adult steelhead run the following year," Stahlberg wrote. "A huge half-pounder run also provides the first concrete evidence that ocean conditions were favorable during the smolts’ first few months at sea. What’s good for Rogue steelhead smolts is also usually good for smolts leaving other coastal watersheds at the same time of year."

Idaho fish face more hazards than their westside cousins because Idaho fish must navigate the entire treacherous Columbia/Snake River system.

But for those fish that safely made the migration to the Pacific, the future could look promising, and so could ours.