One of Sacramento’s great events concluded yesterday and was enjoyed by all.
An excerpt.
Drawn to scales: Thousands watch salmon come home at yearly festival
By Matt Weiser - Bee Staff WriterPublished 12:00 am PDT Monday, October 16, 2006
The big fish thrashed and climbed a little higher, tail fins working as hard as an outboard motor. Onlookers gasped through the chain link as another fall chinook made it home.
The 10th annual American River Salmon Festival, held Saturday and Sunday at the Nimbus Fish Hatchery, revolved around this spectacle. Though the festival was packed with more vendors and activities than ever, the fish ladder pulled visitors back again and again to see a ritual that predates them all.
"It's amazing how they come back to the same place," said Tammie Duke of Rancho Cordova, who watched the fish ladder action with her parents and granddaughter. "It's kind of like a family story, maybe, coming back to where their roots are, year after year."
Awesome though it is, the journey is not quite what nature intended. Salmon climb the fish ladder to spawn artificially in the state hatchery because dams blocked off their original habitat upstream. The dams provide people with water and power, and the salmon continue the journey, which might make the whole thing even more spectacular.
