As the rain beat down hard on the big leaf maple canopy covering the small creek, Hillary Kleeb, Stream Team Coordinator for the Friends of the Hylebos Wetlands, called to volunteer Bob Roper to share in her discovery.

Next to the bank along the upper stretches of the creek, Kleeb had spotted a female coho.

Roper has scouted for salmon on Hylebos creek since the development of the salmon watchers team six years ago. Friends of the Hylebos Director Chris Carrell founded the squad of trained volunteer in 2000.

Roper usually spots salmon on stretches of the creek near the West Milton site, but after a hot tip came in from volunteer Adele Freeland, Roper and Kleeb ventured upstream towards the West Hylebos Wetlands Park to check on a report of coho utilizing the upper stretches of the creek.

They were in luck. In just a few inches of water flowing by their feet swam living evidence that their conservation efforts made a difference for at least one salmon.

The Hylebos welcomes home all of the species of Pacific Northwest salmon, Kleeb said. Summer Chinook enter the watershed in the late summer, followed by coho in the fall and chum salmon in early winter.

"We also get a run of pink salmon as well," said Kleeb, who has worked for the Friends for a little over a year, "but they only come in during the odd numbered years."

It seemed for at least a few months, that Mother Nature might play the most detrimental role in the plight of the 2006 return.

An exceptionally dry summer and fall held flow levels of Hylebos Creek to extreme lows, leaving the team of eight salmon watchers waiting for rain to help push the fish into the system.

"My only hope is that the Hylebos Chinook found some other stream to spawn in," Kleeb said. With very little water, Kleeb added, these fish would not have been able to find usable spawning habitat within much of the watershed.

Until a couple of weeks ago, many of the creek's best spawning habitat remained inaccessible due to trickle-like flows and shallow pools. Kleeb and Carrell predicted that most of the Hylebos' fish spent the fall waiting for water levels to rise out in Commencement Bay, the spot where the watershed dumps into Puget Sound.

But two weeks ago, it began to rain. Then it poured.

Dry gravel bars became suitable spawning grounds almost overnight, and despite some relatively heavy flooding along the Hylebos, the fish took advantage of the hefty flows and entered the creek.

For more information or to volunteer with the Friends of the Hylebos, contact them via their website at www.hylebos.org.