This year, we will release even more fry and cover a broader area. May 15-16, we will release about 286,000 steelhead fry into Whychus Creek. May 21-23 we will be working in the Crooked River Basin and will plant about 242,000 steelhead fry in McKay Creek, Ochoco Creek and the main stem Crooked River near Prineville.
Young steelhead live in the streams for one to three years before heading to the ocean as smolts. As a result, we expect only about a quarter of the smolts produced from this year’s releases to migrate down and through Lake Billy Chinook in 2009. After several years of fry planting, we should see the full range of steelhead smolts, one to three years old, pass through the new fish facilities.

Map of Salmon and steelhead releases Click to enlarge

This year we plan to experimentally mark all the steelhead fry with the chemical calcein. This nontoxic fluorescent marker, visible under a special light, will allow us to distinguish them from wild juvenile rainbow trout as we evaluate the success of the reintroduction program. Rainbow trout and steelhead are the same species; the difference being that steelhead leave the stream after one to three years and swim to the Pacific Ocean. They also grow much larger than rainbow trout before returning to spawn.This entire steelhead/Chinook reintroduction project is a joint collaboration between a wide range of agencies. The steelhead release plan for this year was developed by Brett Hodgson, District Biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, in cooperation with biologists with the Warm Springs Tribes, U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and PGE. These folks are also responsible for actually getting the fry into the creeks and tributaries. They will be released with help from numerous volunteers from the Upper Deschutes and Crooked River watershed councils, Deschutes Basin Land Trust, several irrigation districts, as well as local conservation and fishing interests.
- Don Ratliff

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Chinook salmon, Crooked River & tributaries, Deschutes River & tributaries, Fish, Juvenile fish release, Metolius River & tributaries, Steelhead. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.