This year's surprising run-in-progress is already known to include more of the Columbia River Basin's most imperiled salmon stock – Snake River sockeye – than in any year since 1976.

Through Tuesday a total of 408 sockeye had complete the 450-mile trip up the Columbia and lower Snake river, and up and over eight federal hydro projects, to be counted as they passed Lower Granite Dam, according to data posted online by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dams. Yet to complete is the 400-mile swim up the Snake and Salmon rivers from Lower Granite to central Idaho's Stanley basin.

The record count at Lower Granite for the entire season is 531 in 1976, one year after the first phase of the hydro project was completed and the counts began, according to data compiled by the Fish Passage Center. In those days, the Snake River sockeye were of natural origin, hatched and reared in the basin's small mountain lakes.

A severe decline in the stock prompted its listing as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 1991. Only 16 naturally produced fish have returned to the basin since the listing, the last in 1998.

A captive broodstock hatchery program was initiated in 1991 with all 16 returning anadromous adult sockeye salmon, several hundred Redfish Lake wild juvenile out-migrants, and several residual sockeye salmon adults used to develop captive broodstocks at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game's Eagle Fish Hatchery and at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service facilities in Washington state.

In 2000, 257 adult sockeye made it back to the Stanley basin's Sawtooth Hatchery or Redfish Lake Creek, by far the biggest return to program. The next highest total is 27. In 2000, 299 sockeye were counted passing Lower Granite.

"This should be the highest ever since the program began," said Paul Kline, who headed the program from 1996 to a year ago and now serves as assistant chief of the IDFG's Fisheries Bureau.

Early signs are that this year's Snake River sockeye run is loaded with jacks. Kline said about 30-40 percent of the PIT-tagged fish identified are heading back to Idaho after only one year in the ocean.

"The last time we had a high percentage of jacks was the year before we had our previous high adult return," Kline said. Sockeye normally return to spawn at age 4; jacks are 3-year olds.

In 1999 only seven fish returned to the basin -- 6 jacks and a jill -- but their 4-year-old broodmates returned in force, relatively speaking, in 2000.

"That gives us a reason to be optimistic" about the 2009 return, Kline said. Returning adults are trapped and held while fin samples are genotyped to determine which of the fish are best suited to balance and diversify the program's gene pool. When the lab analysis is complete, some of the fish will be released into basin lakes and others brought in to freshen the hatchery broodstock.

Now, the wait is on. The first of the sockeye cleared Lower Granite on June 25. On average it takes about three weeks for them to get to the hatchery. This year's runoff from the snowpacks above the Salmon River getting a late start this year, flows are higher and the water is cooler than normal for this time of year.

"It's a good time to be migrating in the upper Salmon River compared to most years," Kline said.

Last year 53 sockeye swam over Lower Granite's fish ladders, but only four made it to the hatchery. The recent 10-year average count through July 8 is 30.

The Columbia basin's 2008 sockeye return has been a shocker overall. Counts at Bonneville Dam – 146 miles from the ocean – totaled 208,699 through Tuesday, the highest number since 1955 when the completed run was 237,748 and the third-highest total since recordkeeping began in 1938.

Bonneville is the first dam the fish encounter on their way to the Snake River or mid-Columbia. The vast majority of the sockeye are from the Wenachee and Okanagan river basin's in central Washington.

And the run is not finished, though the daily counts at Bonneville have been in a steady decline from a peak of 15,910 on June 23 to 1,004 Tuesday.

Meanwhile, upriver at Lower Granite, the daily counts rose to the highest of the year this week, 82 on Monday and 73 on Tuesday.