Volunteer Fish Counter (Pine) on a snowy April day.

2018 marked our 14th year of volunteer fish counting. We had over 35 volunteers participate in the count this year, making it one of our best turnouts ever. Thank you!

Volunteer Fish Counter (Wendell Cerne) closely watching the fish go by.

After the two months of counting is complete, JRWA enters all of the data from the logbook into a spreadsheet and submits it to the State’s Division of Marine Fisheries. They run it through their statistical programs to extrapolate our counts into an estimate of the total river herring population in the river.

For 2018, the estimated Jones River population is 10,311 river herring. That’s two times higher than our next best count! This is great news for the fish, for the river, and for us. We were early to get our data in to the state, so we have not yet heard how other local runs did this year. We’ll update you when we get that information.

Herring stacked up at the base of the dam to Silver Lake.

Besides the large numbers of fish this year, the other exciting thing was that the fish made it farther up river than they have in years. JRWA and the Division of Marine Fisheries document river herring (and other species) at the base of the dam leading into Silver Lake. This proves they can make it up the full length of the river and just need our help to clear the last piece. We are working with the State on getting a fish ladder installed as early as next spring.