Intensive Evaluation and Monitoring of Chinook Salmon and Steelhead Trout Production, Crooked River and Upper Salmon River Sites, 1995 Annual Report.

The purpose of this intensive monitoring project is to determine the number of returning chinook salmon and steelhead trout adults necessary to achieve optimal smolt production and develop habitat enhancement mitigation accounting based on increases in wild/natural smolt production. Two locations in Idaho are being intensively studied to meet these objectives. Information from this research will be applied to parr monitoring streams statewide to develop escapement objectives and determine success of habitat enhancement projects. The project to date has developed good information on the relationship between chinook salmon adult escapement and smolt production at low to medium seeding levels. Adult chinook salmon escapements have been too low for us to test carrying capacity. For steelhead trout, they have developed a relationship between parr populations and smolt production at low to high seeding levels, with limited information on carrying capacity.