by Scott | Nov 30, 2012 | News, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study, Tracking Updates
Despite more high water, our trackers were able to locate 12 fish. We witnessed several large movements – Stanley, 007, and Sven each moved over a mile since a week ago. See who’s where with Follow Our Fish! This week, we focus on “Stanley” – released on 10/13/2012 at River Mile 20.0. Over the past month and a half, Stanley has remained within our study section, but he’s been on the move! Recommend watching the video in fullscreen, and set to 720p...
by Scott | Nov 25, 2012 | News, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study, Tracking Updates
Winter is upon us here in the Northwest. The crisp, clear days of early October have given way to the rainstorms of November. With the rain comes high water; and this week we saw plenty of both. The first rains in mid-October brought the water level at Walterville up from summer lows of 1,100 cubic feet per second. We saw a first spike of 4,000cfs on October 16, which corresponded with the first batch of tagged/released fish. We saw a few mild throughout late October and early November which kept the water from receding too much. Our flows in early November were surprisingly consistent with around 3,000cfs from Nov. 4th to Nov. 20th. The week of Thanksgiving brought us three large systems in a row, with over 10 inches of rain falling in the foothills near our study section. The river rose rapidly to a crest of about 18,000cfs. We braved the high flows on Saturday 11/24 to see what sort of fish movement we’d see with the water level having settled down to about 10,000cfs on the Walterville gauge (11,200/5.0′ at Vida). It was a surprisingly easy row given the water level, though a very quick trip from Hendricks to Bellinger. We were not able to stop to pinpoint many of the fish. However, we found 13 of the 20 fish despite the conditions. We also located Sonya for the first time since her release on 10/21. She had likely moved into one of the inaccessible side channels, but is now sitting only a few hundred feet from where she was released. We have now located 19 of our 20...
by Scott | Nov 11, 2012 | News, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study, Tracking Updates
Our Friday group of trackers picked up 17 of our 20 fish (again) between Hendricks and Bellinger. The group of fish at RM 21.0 dispersed, with Nigel and Stanley heading upstream about a half mile while Radio remained in place. The remaining 14 fish showed very little movement – at most, 1/10th mile. A second trip took place on Saturday – our first outside the initial release section. We hoped to locate Sonya (released at RM 19.0), Mike S. (released at RM 20.0) and perhaps even Dixie (released at RM 23.2). We found Mike S. in a side channel at approximately RM 17.3, three miles downstream from his release site. You can see on the image above that Mike S. has gone quite a ways relative to our other fish. Since we did not locate him on any previous tracking trips it is likely that he moved down past Bellinger (RM 19.0) nearly immediately after he was released. Follow Our Fish! to track Mike S., as well as the rest of our trout...
by Scott | Nov 1, 2012 | News, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study, Tracking Updates
Our trackers picked up the same 17 of 20 fish as the previous weekend, though many of them had moved quite a bit. We released 10 fish at river mile 20.0 approximately two weeks ago. Only a single fish remains at this location. Several fish moved quite a bit this week. Radio and Nigel started at river mile (RM) 20.4; and are now at 21.0. Harvey, and Ole headed downstream and are now near the bottom end of our release section at RM 19.2. Gil also moved nearly a mile downstream from his previous location. Stanley was our big mover of the week, moving from RM 19.8 upstream to RM 21.0. Equally notable is the number of fish that haven’t moved much. Nine fish haven’t moved much at all (less than 1/10 mile). Next week we will likely attempt to track fish outside of the initial release section. Suspicion is that Sonya and Mike S. have gone downstream and Dixie has headed upstream. Harvey and Ole are also good bets to move downstream out of the initial release section. See who’s where with Follow Our...
by Scott | Oct 27, 2012 | News, Radio Telemetry Pilot Study, Tracking Updates
We were able to pinpoint 17 of our 20 fish over the weekend. Stay tuned for more! The fish released at river mile 20.0, including Gil, Lenny, Stanley, Sven, Dasha, Chicago, Harvey, 007, and Ole, have stayed in the general area. Sven is our big traveler of the week – he moved downstream 0.55 mile since 10/17/2012. See who’s where with Follow Our...
