San Joaquin Hatchery Fry Photos...and an albino Kokanee

I recently received a few Kokanee fry photos from fellow KP Board member Jake Flohr of Fresno. Jake is part of a very dedicated volunteer team that do the large majority of egg care when they are received from the egg takes in the Fall when the eggs are all under one roof at the San Joaquin hatchery. Once they hatch and grow a bit they are distributed to to other hatcheries for further rearing and as a pre-caution against any major loss. So now I get to see some of the fish my family helped collect which is pretty cool. In another month or so they will be ready for lake distribution.

These fish are nearing 3 inches and are bigger than previous years according to Jake. Here's a few pictures and a couple of the albino Kokanee which Jake says there are a few every year and they get released like the rest. That would be really interesting to catch an albino Kokanee.









Kevin

Thanks for the pics and
Thank You, Jake and your group
Very Cool

Good stuff there Hitech and thanks for sharing. thumbsup

Scott

Great Pic's. Albino Kokes? That would be interesting to see it here in Utah. Definite wall hangar. worthy12

Very cool, HiTech.

It would be interesting to know where all the koke hatcheries/rearing stations are. Is there a list?

Here's how the collection works...

In the fall they have 2-3 egg collection events and all eggs transported back to teh San Joaquin (Friant) fish hatchery. They are cared for extensively through volunteer help and when they hatch the divide up the fry to two other hatcheries, The Silverado and American River Hatcheries. For this year the numbers at each hatchery from November was:

415K - San Joaquin (Friant)
530K - American River Hatchery
212K - Silverado Hatchery

From each hatchery when the water temp is right they get distributed into their respective lakes in their zones as that is up to the DFG to decide plant numbers / lakes / qty and then they also get input from the Kokanee organizations as well.

Hopefully that explains it but ask more questions if needed. This year there were 14 volunteers helping to raise the fish at San Joaquin and they had 241 man hours in as of November and then it tapers off after distribution of eggs and the fish get into the race-ways and have some automatic feeders to keep them fed.

I stress the point of the volunteers and the Kokanee organizations, Kokanee Power and Project Kokanee that contribute back to the fishery in many ways that people don't know about.

Kevin

HiTech,

I don't know how you know all this stuff, but I'm constantly amazed. I looked up the two other hatcheries, and here are the addresses:

American River Hatchery
2001 Nimbus Road
Gold River, CA 95670

Silverado Fish Hatchery
* Address:
7329 Silverado Trail
Yountville, CA 94599
* Directions:
On west side of Silverado Trail, 9 miles north of Napa. Napa County.

wow thats cool albino koke, we in pa have palomino trout that look like albinos they are domestic rainbows selectively bred by the hatcheries as a specialty fish we catch a few every year but in the streams they are sitting ducks for otters snaggers heron coons etc but they look cool.i never seen a albion koke in all my years fishing kokes in ct would def be a wall hanger,but i wonder what color they turn in fall ??? maybe you can ask the man at the hatchery it intrigues me lol

palomino trout aka golden rainbow i got last season looks like an albino.

Wow.. great picture!... I'll bet the Koke don't turn out to be much different. I can ask about this to one of our main contacts at the DFG...I'll guess that no-one has caught one and captured the picture.

Kevin

that would be great look forward to the answer thanks ht

Every one at San Juaquin Hatchery figured the albinos would be the first fish the preditors would eat.That is probably why none are caught.
When we loaded the fish for New Melones and Don Pedro last week they held back all of the albinos that were spotted.I am not sure but I believe they were going to let them get bigger before planting them. Maybe to give them a better chance to survive.
It would be exciting to catch a mature one.
TBtoad

Tks for the heads up tbtoad - it would be great to get some updated photos of them when they are a bit bigger as I'm curious as to what they look like.

Kevin

Do you have a number of fry that is in the Hatckery compaired to last years count great looking pictures

Stanson said:

Do you have a number of fry that is in the Hatckery compaired to last years count great looking pictures

Click to expand...

Hi Stanson,

The numbers overall were up a lot in terms of total eggs collected since they did 3 trips to collect this year. The fry were split between 3 hatcheries..Roughly there were 1.1 million egg but of course less than that hatch. I don't have the numbers from last year but a rough guess is things were up a good 20% more this year. Here's a link with some details and numbers from the Kokanee Power board:

http://www.kokaneepower.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1240

They have already planted a number of the lakes like Melones, Pedro, McClure, Bass and probably some others.

Kevin