Kokanee Salmon Egg Take on the Upper Truckee 10-15-08

[HiTechKoke]

This report is really about catching of a different kind instead of fishing. I decided I wanted to check out a Kokanee egg take process up at the Upper Truckee River. The DFG always does this during the week so I sacrificed and took a day off of work as the family wanted to go as well. We had an absolute blast collecting fish in the river with the DFG and various volunteers from Kokanee Power and Project Kokanee and probably some others as well.

The weirs were already in place from the prior weeks egg take so the fish were ready to be herded and netted. It helps that the DFG has some portable shock devices that persuade those fish to head toward our nets. Once netted the fish are put into buckets and taken to an in-stream egg squeezing station where eggs are squeezed and then a male is grabbed to add the milt. When the eggs filled the pan they were taken to shore for an iodine dip to help ward off any infections.

There weren't as many fish in the Upper Truckee as they had hoped so they are going to do another collection this coming week but this time at Taylor Creek. Since we finished about 1PM we headed down to Lake Tahoe.... stopped by Fanny Bridge and oogled at the 10+ rainbows and gave them some fish food. Then it was on to Taylor Creek just to look at some more Kokanee. Taylor Creek was plugged with Kokanee for a solid quarter mile of the stream it seemed and the egg take there next week will be very successful.

On to the pics and even some video. I have some good UW video as well but I need to get that off of tape so this is all above land stuff the wife and kids took. Rather than embed each video here just go to the links below.. click on the Play All or choose your video. For each video the quality is much better if you click on the "watch in high quality" link on the bottom right of each video after it starts. I wish it would default to this mode. Here's the video playlist links:

Upper Truckee Egg Collection Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=104BA77D49C9F7E1

Taylor Creek Videos (video 3 is my favorite - that clinking noise is the fish banging against the weir.)

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4BAA91ECCAC536F0

Now for some pictures from the Egg take...courtesy of the wife and kids...

 

[HiTechKoke]

and a few more photos...maybe I should put these in an album...

 

[TopFuelKokanee]

Thanks HiTech, very educational. Nice to see the efforts being made to sustain the kokanee fisheries there in California.

 

[FishwithGary]

Thanks HiTech. Excellent job as always. I look forward to the fruit of this labor coming home to Bullard's Bar in 2011.

Gary

 

[Full_Monte]

HiTech,

You really do a service by taking these videos and putting them up on the site.
Thank you very much! It's inspiring.

 

[HiTechKoke]

Thanks HiTech. Excellent job as always. I look forward to the fruit of this labor coming home to Bullard's Bar in 2011.

Gary

Hey Gary... Glad to see you over here and look forward to your posts as always. I'm sure I will see ya at the ISE shows coming up in January.

Kevin

 

[Petty4life]

Thanks HiTech. Excellent job as always. I look forward to the fruit of this labor coming home to Bullard's Bar in 2011.

Gary

Welcome aboard gary.thumbsup

 

[RC McKokanee]

i remember seeing the kokanee spawning in taylor creek when i lived at south lake tahoe. middle 1970's, i couldnt believe people were actually trying to fish for them. the creek was red with fish. a also remember the huge trout at fanny bridge, and i remember the drought that lowered the lake level and those fish were removed.

 

[HiTechKoke]

I wish I would have been able to help collect at fish at Taylor this year as we saw some 3lbrs in the mix as was confirmed by those at the egg take. The overall grade was very good and not widely known it seems as the usual return their is smaller Kokanee.