Red salmon rate of travel

[longtimealaskan]

Does anyone know the average rate of travel for red salmon migrating up the Kenai River? The sonar is at mile 19 on the Kenai River. I'm curious how long it takes the reds, on the average, to migrate to different points on the river, like Sterling and the Kenai Keys area.

[Nerka]

it depends

Based on some tagging results and watching entry at the river mouth travel time from the river mouth can take 1-4 days. Early in the season the fish tend to move slowly so the 2-4 day travel time. At this time of the season they can move in 24 -36 hours to the site. The speculation is that early fish are not as mature and can take the time to travel while fish coming latter must travel fast to reach the spawning grounds at optimum time. So both groups want to reach those spawning grounds near the same time ( the tails of the run may have a different pattern but the main group of fish follow the above). If you figure at least 10 miles per day right now and maybe 20 that brackets it.

[AK Troutbum]

Wow, I was just having this conversation with a co-worker not 10 minutes ago. Don't know much about the lower Kenai as I don't fish it much. We uneducatedly surmised about a week to ten days to reach the Russian. 20 river miles a day (24 hours) at best??

[BrownBear]

What's notable to me is the range of possibilities. Average open ocean migrating speed of salmon is 2-3 times their body length per second. In rivers it will vary a whole lot depending upon water levels, flows, temps, etc.