Drive or walk across the Fifth Avenue Bridge in downtown Olympia these days and you likely will see a bunch of people leaning on the rail and staring into the water.
They are gazing at schools of big chinook salmon, which swim in circles below the fish ladder that leads to Capitol Lake and the Deschutes River.
The salmon return in late August every year, and about 10,000 are expected to return to the Deschutes and the Tumwater Falls Hatchery this year.
The big fish cast a spell on people.
"It's a cool natural event that happens every year," said Amy Schutte of Olympia as her two sons watched the salmon bolt from hungry seals.
"We live in Olympia now, but my kids were born and raised in California, so this is a way to reprogram their brains as Northwesterners."
Read the complete story at theolympian.com