by Scott | Jun 4, 2013 | Five Year Mark & Recapture Study, News, Tracking Updates
We’ve sent out tracking boats the past few weekends, and little has changed with the status of the tracked fish. We are still unable to locate the following: Nigel, Gil, Rusty, Dixie, Sven, Harvey, Ole, and Lloyd. We do have good fixes on 12 other fish, though no substantial movements have been observed. It is suspected that #022 (Wanda) is dead, and has been for a while. Check out everyone’s locations with Follow Our Fish! The Mark & Recapture Study is progressing nicely, with about 200 fish tagged to date. There have been some remarkable fish caught so far this year, with 495mm, 480mm, and 475mm rainbows receiving tags. For those of you who speak in inches, these are 19-20″ fish. Anglers have also noticed an increase in the number of fish in the 200-300mm (8-12″) class this year. Fewer small fish are being caught (less than 200mm), and more medium fish. This seems to be a nice trend and makes fishing more fun. Get out there while you can – we have about a month left in the...
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 3, 2013 | News, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study, Tracking Updates
Our trackers floated the initial release section (Hendricks-Bellinger) on 3/29, and found only nine of the original twenty fish. This next week, we plan to float from RM 40 (Leaburg Dam) to Deerhorn (RM 32), and perhaps down to Hendricks (RM 24) if time allows. We are still working on arranging flights as well. As you can see in the attached document, we’re missing several fish and plan to call in all our available tools to find them! Twenty fish and 40+ miles of river is a big challenge especially with our tags transmitting only two days a week. Most Recent Fish Locations – 040213 Lloyd, a 327mm (12.7″) rainbow trout, is standing in for Floyd for the remainder of the study. Floyd met an untimely death in Leaburg Pool at the hands of a cormorant. Floyd continues to serve as our Facebook spokesfish from beyond the grave. We decided to reuse the tag to add an extra fish to the study, versus allowing it to expire while sitting on a desk. Lloyd will not be considered in the data analysis for the study, as he was tagged at a different time of year than the 20 other fish. As always, you can follow our fish...
by Scott | Mar 30, 2013 | News, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study, Tracking Updates
Our trackers ran from Bellinger to Hayden last week, and from Deerhorn to Hendricks this past weekend. Only two fish were acquired; Stanley (011) near Deerhorn, where he has been for a few weeks, and Mike S. (017), downstream of Bellinger. We also relocated Floyd’s tag (video soon!) and reimplanted it in Lloyd (The Artist Formerly Known As Floyd). Watch how...
