Running red — Kokanee salmon
Harvest of eggs boosts survival rate of species
The kokanee salmon are spawning. It is their final act in life. Their once gleaming silver bodies are now a crimson red. And, instead of looking for food, they are searching for a place to mate and die.
Some fish will spawn naturally. That is, they will find a spot in the river, in twos, one male, one female, and lay and fertilize their eggs.
Others will swim into a fish trap, place themselves in the hands of crews from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, be stripped of eggs and sperm, and then die.
The end is inescapable. The fate of their young, however, can be determined to some degree.
Survival of hatchery-raised eggs, said Allan Ward, project leader at Strawberry for the DWR, is upwards of 50 percent.
"Spawning naturally, survival is around 5 percent, sometimes maybe up to 10 percent. But survival is a lot less. If you only get two fish that survive from each male and female, that's the way nature works. We help to increase those odds," said Ward.
DWR crews began taking eggs last week.
The goal is to gather around 2 million eggs, which would require stripping about 1,500 female kokanee.
"We had about 1,000 females in our traps when we started, so we're well on our way to our objective," he added.
Even though this run is good, said Ward, it is far short of the best kokanee run, which was in 2000 when 15,000 fish ran through the traps at Strawberry.
"The difference is survival. We had really good year classes leading up to both 1999 and 2000. A lot of the fish we stocked, for whatever reason, were not eaten," he added.
"This year, for the first time, we were able to document kokanee fishing through a creel census. What we found was this was a really good year. We were able to document that a lot of kokanee were caught. A lot of those that were caught were stocked in 2004."
Survival is also related to a change in stocking procedures. Fish were once stocked in the reservoir itself. Now the majority of hatchery-raised kokanee are stocked near the mouths of three main streams — Indian Creek, Trout Creek and Strawberry River.
"What we discovered when we stocked kokanee just off the boat ramp was that two years later the fish were back and hanging out around the boat ramp to spawn," Ward explained.
"Salmon imprint where they are stocked and return there when it's time to spawn. We found when we stock fish near streams and rivers we have better runs when those fish mature."
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