Chilkoot River The fish species that are found in the Chilkoot River below the lake outlet are generally the sockeye salmon and Oncorhynchus nerka. In order to enumerate the salmon that pass down the river, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Commercial Fisheries established a weir on the river, in 1976, a few hundred yards downstream from the outlet of the river from the lake, to carry out visual count of “the total sockeye escapement (postseason).” A report for the period 1996-2003 gives the counts done at the weir and also quantity estimates of the sockeye fishes. Chilkoot Lake
Sockeye salmon National Marine Fisheries Service. Other sockeye populations in the upper Columbia River and in Puget Sound are not listed under the Act. Sockeye is an exception to 2010's forecast resurgence of Oregonian fish stocks. Spring Chinook, summer steelhead, and Coho are forecast to increase by up to 100% over 2008 populations. The sockeye population peaked at over 200,000 in 2008 and were forecast to decline to just over 100,000 in 2010. As an early indication of the unexpectedly high sockeye run in 2010, on July 2, 2010, the United States Army Corps of Engineers reported over 300,000 sockeye had passed