04/25/08

SILETZ FISH TRAP:

Friday, 4/25, was a busy day. I met Kevin Bastien at ODF&W and we proceeded to the Logsden store where we picked up Casey. The 3 of us went to the Palmer trap. Bill and Kathy Furgason were "smolt sitting" and had spent the night in Frank's camp trailer. Things had not gone the best for them. The generator was not putting any power into the trailer and the 12 volt battery had died. There was no onboard water due to lack of juice for the water pump, no heat for the same reason and only flashlights for light. I think they were glad to see daylight come and things start to warm up. Bill told us there were fish in the trap. He was soooo right. We did the crowd, net, sort routine and ended up with 24 bucks, 18 hens and 4 jacks.

The Siletz trap had 2 wild hens, 2 wild bucks and 1 hatchery hen. The wild fish were transported across the river to the truck using the small tubes. The large transport box has not been certified yet by the engineer so is not in service. Kevin was going to take the 2 pair to the Alsea hatchery for brood stock. We went back down the gorge road and they dropped me off at Moonshine Park where Barbara was waiting for me. The 2 of us then went back to "Camp Palmer". We unloaded and set our stuff up. I went off to check the smolts, screens and general conditions. Frank came in about 3pm. He found a tripped breaker in the trailer that was preventing 110 volt power from working. He also had a battery to replace the dead one. We fired up the generator and a battery charger for the dead battery. The furnace kicked on in the trailer and it looked like we were all set. Frank and I toured the ponds and noticed there were very few fish left. Most had headed downstream. I fed the remaining fish at 5:30 pm and cleaned the trap face. Barb and I had dinner by the fire and read till around 7pm. The generator quit when the gas ran out but everything was functioning on the 12 volt system. The furnace quit during the night and it was a bit cool this morning. Air temp was 40 and the water temp was 45. Saturday morning there were only a few fish in each pond. I fed them and we broke camp. Did not see a reason to babysit any longer. We got back to Newport about 11:30am.

Wayde