I went with Roger to the Siletz trap and the Palmer trap. Casey checked the Bohanan trap because they knew we had a lot of work at Palmer.
Siletz:
Most of the snow is gone and we were able to drive down to the trap. The last few visits they walked down from the main road. The water was high and just 3 feet below the concrete front wall of the trap. Roger had the collar to install on the drive nut to raise and lower the gate. He put that on and we checked the trap. There were 2 hatchery female Steelhead. The trap has a build-up of sand and silt. Will have to be cleaned soon. Lots of traffic on the road.
Palmer:
Trap had many Steelhead in it and some were quite large. We filled the truck tank with water and then crowded the fish to the west end of the trap. We checked all the fish and had 2 major groups, bright fish that got a tag and put upstream of the pen divider and dark fish that got tossed out to be hauled away. 2 wild males were packed over to the weir and placed upstream of it. I noticed 3 fish upstream of the trap in the beaver pond. I guess they remembered that spot?? After all the fish were sorted we again crowded the tagged fish to the end and loaded them into the truck tank. Roger would hand me the net and I would put them in the tank and record the info. That got to be work with the larger fish and more than 1 in the net. We then loaded all the dark fish that were culled into the back of the truck. Those fish were taken back up river and deposited in the river at 2 different locations.
The numbers were:
56 hatchery males
59 hatchery females
2 wild males
Total of 117.
56 were taken to the Illahee ramp in Siletz and released for another run up the river.
13 had seal bite marks, 1 had net marks and 6 were repeat fish that had been tagged before.
We were back in town at 1534 and I was tired.
Wayde
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