Winooski Hydro 1 fish lift 10/22
Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 10:12 pm
Got to watch the fish lift in action as part of an aquatic ecology seminar. Numbers on the fish board are still climbing fast. We did learn that only ~200 individual salmon have been lifted. The 300+ number counts recaptures:
The box comes up the lift chute very slowly but after a few anxious minutes we could see that there was something in the lift. Looked like a big salmon at first but once it got close we could tell it was just a bass:
Luckily they had 4 salmon in the holding pen from the Thursday and the Friday morning lifts. Nick from USFWS with the first fish, a 4lb female that wasn't tagged and did not have a ventral clip. No clip means it was probably from fry or fingerling stocking in the Huntington River.
Next step is to weigh, measure, and tag the fish:
Tissue samples are taken from some fish for an isotope diet study to determine feeding rates on smelt, alewives, mysis, etc. After the tissue plug is collected they fill the hole with denture cream.
The three other fish were small males and all were recaptures from this year. Apparently some fish are trap happy and like to ride the elevator up and the slide back down to below the dam. One of the males had a nice little kype forming.
Bad news was that all 4 fish had several lamprey wounds. Good news is that the numbers are still climbing every day. Also Nick said that an 8lb male (Matt's fish?) that the Hydro1 lift tagged a few weeks ago showed up in the Boquet lift a few days later.
The box comes up the lift chute very slowly but after a few anxious minutes we could see that there was something in the lift. Looked like a big salmon at first but once it got close we could tell it was just a bass:
Luckily they had 4 salmon in the holding pen from the Thursday and the Friday morning lifts. Nick from USFWS with the first fish, a 4lb female that wasn't tagged and did not have a ventral clip. No clip means it was probably from fry or fingerling stocking in the Huntington River.
Next step is to weigh, measure, and tag the fish:
Tissue samples are taken from some fish for an isotope diet study to determine feeding rates on smelt, alewives, mysis, etc. After the tissue plug is collected they fill the hole with denture cream.
The three other fish were small males and all were recaptures from this year. Apparently some fish are trap happy and like to ride the elevator up and the slide back down to below the dam. One of the males had a nice little kype forming.
Bad news was that all 4 fish had several lamprey wounds. Good news is that the numbers are still climbing every day. Also Nick said that an 8lb male (Matt's fish?) that the Hydro1 lift tagged a few weeks ago showed up in the Boquet lift a few days later.