May 21, 2015: The Holyoke Fishway lifted 7,360 American shad on Tuesday and 21,198 shad Monday according to today’s update fro the Connecticut River Coordinator’s office. Fish passage reports from FirstLight’s Turners Falls fishways are always days behind–due to having no real-time fish counters there reporting. Howsoever, as of their last report from Sunday, May 17th, the season’s total number of shad passing upstream there toward VT and NH spawning grounds was 22,499. That’s a decent DAY’S count at the Holyoke Fish Lift.

Holyoke has also passed 10,849 sea lamprey this season, while 794 have been reported at Turners Falls. This morning test flows from the Turners Falls Dam had been reduced to 2,500 cfs. At 7:30 am head gate flows into the Turners Falls Power Canal were generally quiet as well, with a nearly mirror-like surface and shuffle-along flow visible 100 feet downstream. At 3:30 pm, head gate flows were perhaps a tad more vigorous, but so mild that there we no bubble in the current whatsoever 60 feet from the gates. With more timely fish passage reports it might be possible to tease out how some of these settings are impacting upstream fish passage success.
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The photo above is of an American shad in the bubble-filled window of the Vernon Fishway on Sunday, May 17th. TransCanada has yet to submit fish passage reports to the USFWS website this season.

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