Restoring fish habitat

A fish rises during the early hours.
Wild parr from the pond.
The confluence of two small streams.
Wild cutthroat from the pond.
Labor Day weekend was spent driving around Washington visiting friends and honoring my wife's birthday wishes. Instead of a gift, she opted to get out of town and spend time on a friend's farm outside Sedro Woolley and another friend's land outside Cle Elum. The beauty about having friends with property is that on a busy weekend we have a place to camp. Of course the kayaks went along and so did our new springer spaniel, Nik. I had wanted to visit the farm for some time and it proved to be a wonderful experience. My buddy Chuck dug a 1/4 acre pond on the farm and stocked it with some trout several years ago. The goal was to provide entertainment and fresh fish. After a couple years, the fish disappeared despite his regular feeding. Recently,  resident cutthroat trout found the pond and are now reproducing.
My new kayak dog Nik, enjoys a ride in the Hobie Outback.
The pond is 6 feet deep at the deepest point and averages about 3-plus feet. There are bugs, trees, a nice grassy shoreline and a very small, but year-round stream that starts from a spring on his land and provides a constant source of water. His land is near the Nooksack and because of the spring-fed stream and another stream on his property, he was asked to be involved in a habitat restoration project. I had the pleasure of seeing some early results of this project when I caught some fish in the pond. Both were about 4 inches long but one had the distinct markings of a cutthroat trout, while the other had the markings of a salmon or steelhead parr. Now I am not sure that the parr wasn't the result of breeding fish from the original stocking. However, because both streams flows into the Nooksack and the Nooksack has all five species of salmon, it certainly is possible that this was a parr or smolt from an errant Nooksack pair of fish. I will need to do more research on this. regarding other fun, Nik discovered water and took his first swim. He also discovered swimming takes some practice and Chuck and I had to pull him into the kayaks. The great thing is that I now know I can lift him into the kayak without it tipping over. I guess I may have a new kayak buddy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Starting The Season With A New Fleet

Image
The blog has received little love over the past year, so it was time to write a post. It's not that I have been fishing less, it's that I haven't taken the time to post and work on the videos. The 2022 salmon season was not nearly as epic as the 2021 season especially with the limited fall salmon season. This was mainly due to a unique hatchery Tule Chinook salmon return where the Spring Creek Hatchery upstream of Bonneville Dam had about 100,000 Chinook return - twice the average. The Tule is an endangered species in the rivers below Bonneville Dam and due to some complicated issues,  caused a closure in the lower Columbia River during the height of the season. Hobie PA17t The 2023 salmon season is off to an unseasonably cold start with winter holding on and March coming in like a lion and going out like a lion. No lambs this year. Hopefully better days await in April and beyond. I did reorganize my fleet buying and selling some kayaks while still ending up with a tandem, ...
Read more

A Productive Salmon Season in a Year of Low Returns

Image
This year has proven one of my best yet for putting salmon in the kayak. After a slow start in March and April, I hooked eight and landed six spring Chinook "Springers" on the Willamette River. All were hatchery fish and most were 30-plus inches. They were all caught with my red and orange hand-tied spinners and Pro-Troll 360 flashers. The Springers were caught in May and June, typically the end of the season. These two months seem to be my most productive. Two years ago, I landed six, and had two, two-fish days. This year, I never hooked two fish on the same day, although I had more days catching fish. Most days were spent focusing on the tide changes, and I was usually off the water by noon. I was fortunate because the run was about 25 percent lower than expected and many anglers had a rough season. I spent July fishing for smallmouth bass in the Willamette and Columbia, and spent a few days in August anchored in the Columbia fishing for fall kings. The fall season p...
Read more

Looking towards 2021 while glancing in the mirror.

Image
A limit of springers caught in July! As the fall salmon season was coming to a close, I anxiously waited for another disaster in 2020 while hoping to catch one more fish on the kayak.   Starting with a pandemic, the year seemed like it was forged in strife with racial injustice protests, political conspiracies, hazardous air quality, massive hurricanes, melting glaciers, financial disasters, and finally an election where unproven accusations and lies caused the first breach of our nation's Capitol in more than 200 years. Yep, 2020 was certainly a year we got a clear view of our country's past, present, and future.  Through most of the chaos, I enjoyed many days on my home waters fishing for salmon with my buddy Mark. The kayaks proved a great way to social distance and the Willamette and Columbia Rivers offered opportunities for salmon, steelhead, bass, sturgeon, and shad close to home.  The first half of the salmon season was tough and it wasn't until May that I fin...
Read more