2009 Salmon Returns

Speaking of 2009 Salmon Returns again ...

Colquitz Creek in Victoria (joins Elk Lake to Portage Inlet then into the ocean at Ogden Point), which is all but a ditch most of the year, is back in the Coho biz again! [:p] There's a volunteer run fish fence on the creek. Counts ...

2008 total adult Coho return a dismal 51 counted. (worst return in eight years)

2009 today alone 56 showed up with the high water from the heavy rains

Keep'em coming! :D



God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling - Izaak Walton
 
quote:Originally posted by Governor

Lipripper - I am not well versed about triploids but I know for fact they try and spawn. Roche Lake Resort in the Kamloops area has an artificial spawning channel set up so the big triploid rainbows can spawn. I've actually seen them trying to spawn in that channel. Apparently, so I was told, they have the channel running in spawning season because rainbows do not die after spawning but the triploid females will die of being egg bound if there is no where to drop the eggs as the lake doesn't cut it. (that may be a pile of crap but I was told that by the owner of Roche Lake Resort) The rainbows in Roche Lake are simply for a fishery.
Click to expand...
But I thought that was why the made tripliods... they don't develop gonads which would mean the hormones wouldn't materialize.... We wanted to get some for the trout farm I worked at. The reason they where appealing was that they just grew and didn't mature which takes a lot of food and energy to create the sperm/eggs. When they get their "spawn suit" on they were un-harvestable for quite some time.
At that time though the techniques were somewhat still in the rough and marginally successful.
Thats how those "trout" in lake Deifenbaker get so big...Wild west Steelhead grows tripliods to market a steelhead, The ones that escaped just sat under the pen gobbling up the fall through.
 
DFO update for Cowichan River

The fence counts to 0800 hours, 19 October are as follows:

Chinook Adults 166
Chinook Jacks 174
Coho Adults 1526
Coho Jacks 825
Chum 32
Pink 156

In addition, the Cowichan River Hatchery has collected approximately 600 Chinook, mostly adults for brood. Half of these have been returned to the Cowichan River because the Hatchery is only allowed to take one third of the spawning escapement.

The run timing projection for Chinook Adults is 218, with a min and max of 166-394.[:0][xx(] During the flood event last weekend the flow increased from 7 cms up to 22 cms, which allowed a large number of salmon, mostly Coho, to move upstream through the fishway at the fence. There was an increase in Chinook during this period as well.

The Cowichan Lake weir will be increasing the discharge today from 7 cms to 20 cms, facilitating migration of all salmon species into the Cowichan and upstream to the spawning grounds.

A couple of things for everyone to think about.

This year has seen a huge return of Pink salmon to southern BC waters including Cowichan, and there are several indications that the Coho Adult return has been strong as well, including Cowichan. Both of these groups of salmon entered the ocean in 2008. Based on this information, the Chinook Jacks should have had good survival as well but the fence data indicates a lower survival.

Cowichan, as well as Goldstream, Chemainus, Nanaimo, Somass and Thompson River (Fraser) have seen extremely low Chinook returns. This is not a unique Cowichan Chinook problem. This is a southern BC problem, which requires a southern BC solution.

In 2008 there was a low number of Chinook Jacks which indicated that the adult return this year would be low. This year, the jack return is even lower than last year indicating that next year could be even worse. In other words, the Pinks and Coho result points to a good return of Chinook Adults next year, and the Chinook Jack result point to a lower return of Chinook Adults next year.

The fence is scheduled to be removed from the river on 29-30 October although if water levels get too high then it will be removed earlier. Deadpitch operations started this week and will continue until early December.



God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling - Izaak Walton
 
DFO Somass Update:

Somass River Escapement Observations to Oct 18 2009:

During the past 5 days at Stamp Falls Chinook adult numbers have ranged from 0 to 529. Coho adults have ranged from 0 to 1051 and Sockeye adults have ranged from 0 to 396. Total escapement is 9,060 Chinook, 58,510 Coho and 186,183 Sockeye. Sockeye escapement to Sproat Lake is estimated at 144,742 adults up to Sept 8. Additional data is available but requires some vetting.
Stamp Falls was fully operational on Oct 14/15 but was reduced to 2 hours counting on Oct 16 and was closed due to high flows and poor visibility on Oct 17/18. It is back in full operation for Oct 19.
River flows have increased substantially over the past few days and are now moderately high. River temperature is now 13 Celsius

God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling - Izaak Walton
 
Latest on the Cowichan fence ...


This update is for 0800, 22 October.

The increased flow out of Cowichan Lake has provided good passage opportunities for salmon migration up the river. I'm anticipating that we will be able to keep the fence in until 29 October.

Totals to date:
Chinook Adults 173
Chinook Jacks 184
Coho Adults 2215
Coho Jacks 871
Chum 37

The run timing projection for a fence count of chinook is 218. The Cowichan River Hatchery has released approximately 300 Chinook above Skutz Falls and are retaining approximately 300 at the Hatchery.



God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling - Izaak Walton
 
Has it ever crossed one's mind that the southern B.C. chinook runs have taken such a huge nose dive ever since the pressure on immature winter stocks has increased.. For one, not all of the chinook salmon that return to sea migrate to the Bearing, leaving (local adolecsents) to be hammered upon 12 months of the year. Where do you think all of these grilse to 8-10 pounders are supposed to be going come maturity.. I don't think it should have to take a senior DFO biologist to figure this one out.. Maybe there should be a closure during the opportune times that the little guys are feeding in our local waters.. Who knows, maybe the outcome would allow these guys to have their fill with mature fish instead of killing the babies because they taste better. Ahh Duhh[}:)]
 
Dirty, good idea generally and I agree anglers must do their part, however I seriously doubt we have enough fish caught and retained from October to May. There just isn't the angling pressure.

I still think a large part of the problem has been a major reduction in the hatchery production as compared to south of the line.

Searun
 
Dirty, I can tell you for sure it's not the winter springs in the JDF as it has been determined manyfold that the huge majority of the springs caught there are Washington springs. My records show about 95% of the winter springs between Victoria and Sooke were clipped - therefore overwhelmingly not of Canadian origin. And to be honest, I couldn't think of any other West Coast location with a comparably established winter spring fishery that could have any significant impact on any stocks.
 
Point well taken, but the 12 inch grilse are destined for all points in between, not only during winter but even throughout aug. the reports of higher than usual numbers of the little fellas was reported in many locations.. I thought it was based on the ocean survival, juvenile mortality, and so forth that dictated a mature run size estimates.. Who knows, you just hear of commercial fisheries for immature chinook in the latter winter months and spring months.. They gotta be getting nailed somewhere along the way, even these Bearing draggers and so forth... No matter where along the line I guess we can only rip into ourselves for the mess.-dirty[8D]
p.s.- need a little smily with waders tonight, man is it pissing!!
 
I spoke to the Renfrew Hatchery yesterday and they had extremely strong returns of Chinooks this year. They got all the fish they needed in one week. It turns out that they only took about 10% of the fish that returned to the river so there will be lots of natural reproduction on that river system this year which bodes well for the future. The fact that no one lives on that river system seems to be a strong factor in healthy returns.
 
The Sooke River has strong returns this year as well and there are tons of people living along this river. There must be more to the equation than that.
 
Sooke river is not that strong, yes they are easy to catch right now, but its not very high in numbers.
 
I am not talking about how easy they can be caught. I am referring to how quickly the hatchery had their brood stock together (springs and coho)and how many springs and cohos made it into the system. Definately one of the better years compared to the last years (2008 was pretty good too). There is no fish count on the Sooke so we don't know the numbers but experience tells us it's a good year. Chums don't look too bad either.
 
Hey Governor, what is the latest counts on the Cowichan?? I see they took down the counting fence on Wed. Thanks
 
As of the 19th of October here is the Cowichan Round Table report.
Chinook 166 , 174 jacks
All streams flowing into the Georgia Straits basin are recording alarmingly low chinook returns.
Coho 1526 , jacks 825
Pinks 155 , many thousands milling around the deep sea dock , the rains have pulsed some in the last few days.
Hatchery had 500 chinook and 50 jacks , they returned 300 above Skutz Falls for brood stock.
Cowichan Tribes guardians and other community volunteers seized 7 illegal nets 5 were apparently native and 2 were non native.
Chum are starting to enter the system now.
This is the report I have from the CFRT Meeting.

AL
 
Doesn't it seem like taking the first returns for hatchery brood stock will eventually push the runs earlier and earlier? Seems like it would act like natural selection.... in an unnatural way.
 
Hey Goose,

Only just saw your request for Cowichan numbers. Here's the last official DFO report on the fence and river info ...


This update is for 28 October.

This will be the final update of the Cowichan Chinook fence this year. I will put out an email with finalized numbers of Chinook escapement when the data has been reviewed and analyzed. We will look at the deadpitch data and video data to make adjustments to the fence counts, plus I'll provide final numbers on the Cowichan River Hatchery brood take and release, the Cowichan Tribes' Food, Social, and Ceremonial catch and the Commercial and Sport catches of coded-wire tagged Cowichan Chinook.

The Cowichan Chinook fence was removed from the water yesterday, two days earlier than planned. I made this decision based on a forecast of 2 inches of rain for today and tomorrow which would have made very dangerous conditions for the original date of tomorrow and a possibility of damaging the fence panels in higher flows. As it was the panels were going under water Monday morning despite constant cleaning of the leaf debris coming downstream.

The interim final fence counts are:
Chinook Adults - 175
Chinook Jacks - 195
Coho Adults - 3565
Coho Jacks - 941
Chum - 134
Pink - 71
Unknown - 91

The Unknown category are mostly Pink salmon. Over the next few weeks the video data will be reviewed to check species ID, counts and to categorize the unknowns. In the past this effort has not changed the visual count significantly.

There was a large push of Chum salmon over the last couple of days that isn't reflected in the fence count as they were able to leap over the submerged panels. Also, it's great to see a large return of Coho salmon this year.

The deadpitch crew have reported Chinook spawning activity and they have recovered their first Chinook carcass.


Note the comment on Coho - "large return" (3565 adults - is that large for Cowichan?) These are relative to the time the fence is removed. Usually by end of October only a few hundred have gone past the fence, but many more will come into the river over November and December. So the total number for 2009 should be much higher than normal.

If I get any more info I'll post it.

Gov

God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling - Izaak Walton
 
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