20th Anniversary
For the safety, courtesy, health and enjoyment 
of all Salmon Festival visitors, please leave your pets at home.
Fun Fish Facts
From Frank and Franny Fish
Fun Fish Facts for You!
- Did you know a female spring Chinook salmon carries more than 4,000 eggs?
- Salmon returning to the Wenatchee River travel 500 miles and over 7 dams from the Pacific Ocean to get to their place of birth.
- 130,000 visitors have enjoyed Salmon Fest during these past 16 years.
- Salmon Rule, Trout Drool!
- Fish can get sunburns.
- Frank, Frances, and Sammy Salmon have been hugged by 100,000 kids since the festival began.
- Swimming Mayflies may shed their skin as many as 27 times!
- Caddisflies eat dead leaves, and fungi on the leaves may be a source of nutrition, like peanut butter on bread.
- Vocabulary Words to Know:
- Redd- Nest dug in gravel by female salmon to put her eggs in
- Anadromous- Fish that migrate from fresh water to salt water and back to fresh water to spawn
- The oldest known salmon is 7 years old. Count the rings on a fish scale to determine their age…much like counting the rings on a tree.
- The oldest salmon fossil found is 50 million years old.
- 5 to 6 million years ago salmon had fangs, weighed over 500 lbs. and were ten feet long.
- The intricacies of a salmon’s genetic code insist that the salmon always faces upstream into the current, so that when it navigates to the sea it swims tail first.
- When Lewis and Clark entered the lush Pacific watersheds in 1804, they discovered millions of salmon in the untamed wild Columbia River. At that time 15 to 20 million salmon lived in the pristine habitat of the mighty Columbia.
