Salmon Days promises ‘thrills’ in festival theme
March 27, 2012
Salmon Days Festival 2012 theme
Salmon Days Festival organizers dipped into local history to craft the 2012 festival theme — “Thrills & Gills,” a hat tip to the Issaquah Rodeo from a century ago.
The logo sports a cowboy astride a leaping — or bucking — salmon. Organizers said the theme is meant to reflect the excitement of salmon returning to Issaquah Creek to spawn each autumn.
In the early 1900s, long before Salmon Days, a Fourth of July celebration and a rodeo at modern-day Veterans’ Memorial Field served as the main attractions in the coalmining and farming community. By 1910, the celebration shifted from Independence Day to Labor Day.
In 1970, the Issaquah Chamber of Commerce presented the inaugural Salmon Days Festival as part of Labor Day festivities.
Salmon Days Festival delivers mild, wild fun
October 4, 2011
Issaquah’s annual celebration returns for 42nd year
The S’Duk Albix parade float, with Snoqualmie Tribe members, enthralls Grande Parade spectators. Phot0 by Greg Farrar
Organizers promised a wild Salmon Days Festival.
The mild temperatures — misty clouds on Oct. 1 yielded to stray sunshine Oct. 2 — belied a rowdy theme, and crowds turned out in droves for the salmon-centric celebration.
The festival unfolded as a tribute to the untamed under the theme “Wild Things!” — a riff on the classic children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are.”
Salmon Days spanned Issaquah, from hydroplane races on Lake Sammamish to booths lined up downtown to a float-filled parade inching along city streets. The festival lured more than 150,000 people to Issaquah as the annual autumn celebration returned for a 42nd year.
To celebrate the occasion, Maple Valley resident Bob Taylor ordered a Flintstonian turkey leg from a Foods of the World booth along the trolley track and tore off a bite from the outsized drumstick.
Salmon Days Festival 2011 / Oct. 1, 2011
October 1, 2011
Salmon Days Festival returns to downtown Issaquah
October 1, 2011
Girl Scout Troop 42127 members ride on a flatbed truck decorated with salmon Saturday during the annual Salmon Days Festival Grande Parade. By Greg Farrar
UPDATED — 12:50 p.m. Oct. 1, 2011
The ode to salmon migration, Issaquah’s iconic Salmon Days Festival, returns to downtown Issaquah on Saturday.
The festival is expected to lure more than 100,000 attendees to the city Saturday and Sunday for a parade, carnival games, street snacks, arts and crafts, and, of course, a chance to see migrating chinook in Issaquah Creek.
Spot Salmon Days’ Roving Fish Fan for prizes
October 1, 2011
NEW — 6 a.m. Oct. 1, 2011
Find the Roving Fish Fan at the Salmon Days Festival to reel in prizes from the pun-happy festival’s ohfishal spawnsors.
Spot the Roving Fish Fan at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Sunday.
If you find the Roving Fish Fan first at the different locations at the festival, he or she then tells you a booth number or offers you a business card to claim a prize.
Find real-time clues to find the Roving Fish Fan on Twitter. Use the hashtag #FishFan to track him or her, find out what he or she is wearing, and learn secret words to become a winner. Find clues on Facebook, too.
Use the hashtag #SalmonDays to join the festival on Twitter.
Roving Fish Fan prizes include $100 gift certificates to Virginia Mason Medical Center’s MediSpa, plus prizes from BECU, Swedish/Issaquah, Orthopedic Physician Associates, CleanScapes, Overlake Hospital Medical Center, Coldwell Banker Bain and Seattle Children’s.
Salmon Days offers much more fare than fish
October 1, 2011
NEW — 6 a.m. Oct. 1, 2011
Despite the name, the Salmon Days Festival is about a lot more than fish. (Though the Kiwanis Club of Issaquah prepares coho aplenty at a barbecue fundraiser.)
Find other festival treats throughout Salmon Days and at Foods of the World near the historic Issaquah Train Depot, 50 Rainier Blvd. N. Think barbecued beef, gyros Philly-style cheese steaks, tacos and Thai noodles, plus corndogs and funnel cakes aplenty.
Stop by Gibson Park, along Newport Way Southwest across from the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery, for the Kiwanis Salmon Barbecue.
Hatchery salmon make ultimate sacrifice for species’ survival
October 1, 2011
Concrete troughs hold young hatchery-bred salmon at the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery. Contributed
NEW — 6 a.m. Oct. 1, 2011
There are steps in the process that may not be pretty, but it’s all aimed at aiding in the survival of Pacific salmon.
In hopes of eventually releasing millions of young salmon back into local waters, workers and volunteers at the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery harvest nearly 2,000 mature chinook and coho salmon annually. They also take in kokanee from Lake Sammamish.
The chinook and coho check into the hatchery via Issaquah Creek. This year, the first fish arrived Aug. 23. Those tabbed to help with ushering in a new generation don’t check out.
Some people are surprised to learn mature salmon are killed for artificial breeding purposes, admitted Darin Combs, hatchery manager. Visitors can watch the fish being collected and processed. Combs said somewhat surprisingly to him, adults have the strongest negative reactions. Children aren’t as offended, sometimes asking to see the fish remains. The important thing to remember, Combs said, is that all salmon — males and females — die after spawning.
The first salmon to reach the hatchery are chinooks. Biologically driven to go upstream to spawn, the fish only have one way to go once they reach the facility, Combs said, and that is up the hatchery fish ladder and into holding ponds. The first harvest of male and female chinooks is completed in late September.
“You have to get your hands on the fish,” Combs said. “So you get in the water in your waders and you grab the fish by the tail one at a time.”
Entertainment options abound on Salmon Days stages
October 1, 2011
NEW — 6 a.m. Oct. 1, 2011
From blues to bluegrass, folk to funk, and rock to R&B, musicians cover a broad spectrum on Salmon Days Festival stages.
The action is spread across five stages situated throughout the festival grounds.
Salmon Days Festival spawns street closures
September 27, 2011
Motorists should prepare to brake for salmon Oct. 1-2 as more than 100,000 people migrate to Issaquah for the Salmon Days Festival.
The festival and the opening Grande Parade spawn road closures on streets in the historic downtown and the business district. Motorists should prepare for daylong closures on both festival days.
Northwest Burn Foundation to raise funds at Salmon Days
September 27, 2011
Visitors to the Salmon Days Festival can help local burn victims through the Northwest Burn Foundation’s annual fundraising event, Give Burns the Boot.
Manning first aid stations set up around the festival site, Eastside Fire & Rescue volunteers will pass a boot to raise money for burn survivors.
“We not only collect money for the Northwest Burn Foundation, but we also provide burn prevention information to the public,” said EFR volunteer firefighter Anita Sandall, this year’s Burn Foundation coordinator for local firefighters.
