Friday, Mar. 19 2010
Wayde and Bill left the Pig House at 0800 and went to the Chevron station with a nearly empty tank. We had the "lib truck" which has the big tank on it. This truck is hard to fill with gas and it must be dribbled in slowly. After 15 or 20 minutes the attendant gave me the receipt and we headed north. A few miles north of Newport, Bill noticed we only had 3/4 tank of gas. We guess the attendant ran out of patience and just sent us on our way.
Our first stop of the day was at Schooner Creek. The water was clear and 38 degrees. No fish and the trap was clean. We left Schooner about 9:30 am and saw a lone Bald Eagle sitting on a limb above a shallow riffle, fishing?? We went up Hwy 229 to Siletz then on up to the gorge.
We stopped to check the Palmer trap but it too was empty with water at 42 degrees. We left Palmer at 10:50 and continued up the gorge road.
We arrived at the Siletz Falls trap at 11:30. The water was down and clear, 38 degrees. The trap had 16 Steelhead in it.
3 wild males 7 wild females
4 hatchery males 2 hatchery females
1 wild female was marked and put back down the ladder. The remaining fish were transported across the river along with 3 buckets of water and put in the truck tank. These will be used as brood stock. We left at 12:57 and went east through Valsetz and headed toward the Alsea Hatchery. Remember the gas I mentioned earlier, well I looked at the gauge and it was near 1/4 tank. After a lively debate and a consensus discussion we went into Philomath and gassed up, again. This time it took 24 gallons. The good news was that the tank showed full now.
Arrived at the Alsea Hatchery near 3:00 pm and began processing the fish. All the wild fish were sedated, inoculated and tagged. The hatchery fish were placed in a different holding tank.
We left the hatchery at 4:00 pm and followed the Alsea river to Waldport then on Hwy 101 to Newport. We got in at 5:04 pm. A long day but very nice with sunshine, no wind and a high of 70.
Wayde
No comments:
Post a Comment