Salmon set new record in Auburn Ravine

Fall 2021 was a great season for adult salmon swimming up Auburn Ravine to spawn in Lincoln and in the foothills to the east. Friends of Auburn Ravine has been using video cameras to count salmon as they swim through Lincoln since the fall of 2016. This has been a great team effort. Nevada Irrigation District, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the city of Lincoln provided valuable technical support. Our volunteers visit the site two or three times each week to keep everything clean and operational. Generous donors such as California Fly Fishers Unlimited, Patagonia and the Rose Foundation helped to fund the cameras, cables and recording gear. And Hewlett Packard Enterprise allocated time for one of their software wizards to develop custom video-processing software that speeds the counting process. During the big rainstorm of late October 2021, our cameras suffered some damage from debris pushed downstream by the high water. But we are happy to report that we were still able to capture video from mid-October through early January. All the video has now been scanned by the software and the count verified by the human eye. Our cameras captured video of 358 adult fall run chinook salmon swimming up Auburn Ravine through Lincoln. That is the most in one season since serious counting efforts began 10 years ago. Most of these salmon were two to three feet long. Some were almost 4 feet long. The highest previous season total was 326. The average over the last 10 seasons is 110. This is good news for all of us who care about the creek but it is even better news for the many animals, including otters, mink, raccoons, hawks, eagles and bobcats that rely on salmon for sustenance during the colder days of the year. As we processed the video from our overhead camera, we saw an otter taking home a big meal for its family. The otter swimming downstream in this video clip is about four feet long and the salmon is about three feet long. We know this because the white panels on the streambed are about five feet from the upstream edge to the downstream edge. Type this link into your personal computer, tablet or cell phone: https://youtu.be/-2yjZqY1S6M. Auburn Ravine Salmon camera results from 2021 to 2022 Video recorded: 82 days (Oct. 14 to Jan. 3) First salmon seen: Oct. 27 Highest daily count: Nov. 11 (48 salmon) Last salmon seen: Dec. 22 Total salmon counted: 358 Notes: 1. The damage mentioned above reduced our ability to see salmon by about 33 percent from late October onward. Were it not for that damage, we probably would have been able to see more salmon than the 358 reported here. 2. For 12 days, the water was too muddy to see any fish. Learn more about the Auburn Ravine at https://www.auburnravine.org. James Haufler is president of the nonprofit Friends of Auburn Ravine, which was formed in 2016.