by Scott | Aug 7, 2013 | News, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study, Tracking Updates
With the summer heat, our fish appear to have settled down for the time being. We’re still tracking about a dozen fish, including Eeyore, Dasha, Chicago, 007, Sonya, Radio, Stanley, Finn, Lenny, Mike S., Waldo, and Wanda. Check who’s where with Follow Our Fish! The rumor on the street is that Wanda and Stanley have met unfortunate demises, but without tag recovery, we can’t be sure. We did get an opportunity to aerial track last week; this time in a Cessna 172 flown by one of the study volunteers. We removed the door and flew low and slow… a fantastic way to spend an...
by Scott | Jun 13, 2013 | Five Year Mark & Recapture Study, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study, Tracking Updates
Our trackers floated from Hendricks to Bellinger on Friday, 6/8, and located eight fish, including Eeyore, Dasha, Sonya, Radio, Finn, Lenny, Waldo, and Wanda. These fish haven’t moved much in the preceding several weeks. Finn and Wanda have not moved in several months. Finn has been hanging around RM 20.4, and Wanda at RM 22.7. Many of the volunteers have suspected that one or both of these fish are dead. On Sunday, 6/10, one of our volunteer crews was tagging fish for the Mark & Recapture Study. They had caught several fish on the evening… Julia was fishing a softhackle at RM 20.4, midstream (abeam of the log on river left), and hooked a nice fish. We landed it and when it was in the bucket, I noticed it had a floy tag – Julia’s first recaptured fish. Nice. I got to work scraping off the algae and read #02811. I brought the fish out to measure, and saw an 8” long wire protruding from its abdomen! Awesome! Sure enough, we’d recaptured #013, Finn, who had been tagged on 10/19, and hadn’t moved a lick since. When tagged, he was 297mm – yesterday he measured out at 318mm and appeared in good...
by Scott | May 13, 2013 | Five Year Mark & Recapture Study, News, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study, Tracking Updates
“Where’d that fish run off to?” is a question we’ve been asking for several weeks now. We located one of the missing fish this past week by reviewing fixed station data provided by the University of Idaho, who operates a series of antenna arrays in the Willamette system. “007” showed up as at Leaburg Dam (RM 40.0) on 3/1/2013; lingering in the area for about 6 hours. We got lucky since our transmitters are only active for 2 days per week – he just happened to be passing the antenna when his transmitter was on. He had previously last been seen on 2/1 at RM 20.8. Our trackers located him this past week (5/10) at RM 23.1 – back in the study section! This means that “007” made a remarkable round trip of at least 36 miles in less than three months! He may well have gone further as we did not pick him up on our telemetry flight on 4/21. We located our other usual suspects this past week in a float from Taylor’s Landing (RM 28.2) to Bellinger (RM 19.0). See who’s where with Follow Our Fish! We kicked off the 4th year of the Mark & Recapture Study on May 1, and early returns from anglers have been good, with several nice rainbow trout caught and lots of action on dry flies. Stay tuned for...
by Scott | Apr 22, 2013 | News, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study, Tracking Updates
We were finally able to schedule a radio-tracking flight for Friday afternoon, but the weather didn’t cooperate and we were rained out. We were able to reschedule to Sunday morning at the crack of dawn – and three of us braved the early hour and lifted off the ground at about 6:30AM. The clouds were low – a solid deck at 1,400’, right at the legal allowable minimum. We figured we’d make it at least to the narrowing of the McKenzieValley at HendricksBridge. We took off, and headed towards the Willamette. I was sitting shotgun, with the window up, arm out the window with the handheld antenna. It wasn’t pretty, but it was effective and didn’t require any special rigging or FAA approvals. Two volunteers, let’s call them ‘volunteer man familiar with telemetry’ and ‘volunteer woman familiar with telemetry’, were in the rear seats. VManFWT had the datasheet and GPS; VWomanFWT had the receiver. We planned that the receiver-holder would call out the tag number and power, and the recorder would scribble down the data. We set the receiver at a high gain of +90 and flew up the McKenzie. We started hearing tags clearly around HaydenBridge, but the receiver did not code any of them. We received many error codes (I1, I999, etc). We continued upriver to Hendricks, where the clouds had socked in the upper valley. We turned around and went downstream, figuring there was no use continuing upstream unless we were able to code fish. We played with the gain, dropping it to +70, and began coding fish on the way downstream near Bellinger. We turned...
by Scott | Apr 8, 2013 | News, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study, Tracking Updates
An eventful week in tracking – we floated from Leaburg Dam (RM 40.0) all the way to Bellinger Landing (RM 19.0), in hopes of finding some of the missing trout. Unfortunately, after this mission, we’re still missing eight fish! Are they up tributaries? Hidden in side channels? Upstream past RM 40.0? There were several notable developments: Stanley at RM 28.7, is very much alive, and residing in a nice tailout full of March Brown mayflies. Waldo, after nearly six months of hanging within a couple hundred meters of his original release site, rocketed upstream from RM 20.4 to RM 24.9, in the course of six days. It appears that he journeyed under his own power, as he is in a deep run which suggests he’s still swimming. Lloyd, our new addition, continues to move upstream – tagged on 3/15 at RM 19.0, he first moved to RM 19.3 last week, and is now all the way up to RM 21.0. Chicago was located last week and seems to have gone missing this week. She is 22″ long so it’s unlikely that she fell victim to avian predation. Perhaps she had just tucked up under some brush or in a side channel. See who’s where with Follow Our Fish! We’re starting our 2013 Mark/Recapture season soon – kickoff meeting April 30th,...
by Scott | Apr 8, 2013 | Five Year Mark & Recapture Study, News, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study
McKenzie River Wild Trout Population Study 2012 Wrapup and 2013 Kickoff Meeting Tuesday, April 30th, 2013, 6:00PM Oregon Department of Forestry Conference Room, 3150 Main St., Springfield, OR 97478 (across from ODFW office) Mark your calendars and join us for the kickoff of the 2013 Lower McKenzie River Wild Trout Population Study! Dave Thomas will be presenting our 2012 end-of-season report, with maps and preliminary population estimates for the first three years of the study. Arlen Thomason and Scott Kinney will discuss the progress and ongoing findings from the Radio Telemetry Study. The 2013 Mark/Recapture (Floy-tagging) study season will begin on May 1st and continue through the end of June. For those of you who haven’t fished the study section lately, we’ve seen dramatic improvements in the fishing since our first season. In 2010, we averaged about 3 wild trout per trip; in 2011, about 6; and in 2012, we saw almost ten wild trout landed per trip! This spring is shaping up to be the best fishing in years, with low water, warm temperatures, good hatches, and limited snowpack. Whether you can spend one day or twenty on the water, we’d love to have your help! All volunteers for the 2013 season will need to have completed the ODFW Floy-tagging training. ODFW staff will be offering Floy-tagging training after the meeting for new volunteers and previous participants who want a refresher course. If you attended a training meeting in 2010, 2011, or 2012, attendance is not required. That’s not all! We’ll be awarding prizes for 2012, and discussing exciting new prizes for 2013! Please contact redside@mckenzietroutstudy.org or shannon.e.richardson@state.or.us if...
