03/14/08

SILETZ AND PALMER FISH TRAPS:

A good friend of mine, Gary Smith, accompanied Kevin Bastian and myself on the trap runs today. Casey met us at the Wildcat bridge and went with us to the Palmer and Siletz traps. Cool with overcast and showers all day. Kevin is the new ODF&W employee for trap duty.
Palmer had 47 steelhead in the trap and 3 in the pool below. We crowded them to the west end and did a sort. All the ripe males and females that were in good shape were left in the trap as potential brood stock for a new study being started to spawn wild fish with hatchery fish. The program is being done at the Alsea Hatchery. 20 fish were dispatched and returned to the river.
The Siletz trap had 11 fish from Wednesday and 6 new ones. 1 was killed and put back in the river. The remaining 16 were transported across the river to the tank on the truck. We went back down to Palmer and netted 2 pair to add to the mix and then took the 20 fish to the Alsea hatchery. Casey went back to Newport.
At the Alsea hatchery Matt and Eric handled the fish we brought them with each fish getting an antibiotic shot and a tag in the jaw. None were spawned at that time but would be later. They had 2 spawned fish that we loaded and took back to Siletz and returned them to the river at the Ilahee ramp. We got back to Newport at 1725. A long but interesting day.
Wayde