OregOn ishWorks F Fall 2010 News from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (ODFW) Fish Restoration and Enhancement (R&E) and Salmon and Trout Enhancement Programs (STEP) Winchuck River screw trap project provides decades of data or the past 21 years, fall Chinook salmon smolt outmigration data has been collected Ffrom a screw trap on the Winchuck River, in southwestern Oregon, just upstream from the river’s estuary. For the past 13 of those years, Salmon Trout Enhancement Program volunteers from the South Coast Fishermen have been an integral part of that data collection effort. The screw trap was purchased by the South Coast Fishermen and donated to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. In addition, a private landowner allows access through his property to set up and operate the trap each year. The survey runs from June through August, when the smolts are migrating downstream to the sea and, according to Lower Rogue STEP biologist John Weber, provides an important Volunteers from the South Coast Fishermen have been helping ODFW operate a screw trap for outmigrating fall Chinook salmon smolts on the Winchuck River ‘snapshot’ of how the river’s fall Chinook are for the past 13 years. ODFW Photo faring. There is no hatchery program for the Winchuck so all its fall Chinook In This Issue salmon are wild fish. The spawning run goes from early November through December and averages a few thousands fish each year. There is also a run Winchuck River of winter steelhead and a small coho run on the river. Because the screw trap project involves more than identifying fish and C. Shasta letting them go, volunteers receive weekly training sessions on safe trap Latest STAC and R&E Grants operation, fish identification and fish marking techniques. Volunteers work five days per week through the trapping season in two person teams. The Long Tom Cutts project is essentially a capture-recapture study. “It’s involved,” said Weber. “We’re making outmigration estimates that Fish Heroes requires clipping the fish, releasing them back upstream and then Mann Lake Restoration identifying the recaptured fish.” A statistical formula is then applied to come up with a total population estimate. This season South Coast Fishermen volunteers and ODFW biologists operated the trap for 62 days, capturing and marking 4,602 outmigrating fall Chinook smolts for a total of about 170 volunteer hours. The South Coast Fishermen have also been helping ODFW collect Chetco River fall Chinook scale samples for the past 19 years. Latest STAC R&E helps fund fish parasite Mini-Grants study in upper Klamath basin MG 09-48 Kokanee Karnival Researchers from Oregon State “It appears there is not a high Youth Education University are investigating a parasite contribution from the Program Video, Central microscopic parasite in the upper tributaries,” said Hurst, “but there Oregon Flyfishers, $867 Klamath basin called Ceratomyxa are two areas of high parasite MG 09-49 Rain Water shasta that can be fatal to salmon density in the main river.” These Supplementation & and trout. The study, funded in part two ‘hot spots’ include the lower Water Quality, by an $80,700 grant from the R&E river where it flows into Upper Warrenton High Program, is looking at the Klamath Lake and in the upper Fisheries, Inc., $1,500 distribution and abundance of the river above Spring Creek. MG 09-50 Salmonberry River Macroinvertebrate parasite in the Williamson River To complicate matters, there are Study, Native Fish and its tributaries. Information at least three different strains of the Society, $2,000 gained from the study will help parasite that affect different species MG 09-51 Canyonville ODFW fisheries managers learn of salmonids. Type 1 primarily Acclimation Site, how to deal with endemic pathogens affects Chinook salmon and is found Umpqua Fishermen if salmon and steelhead are in the lower Klamath basin below Association, $1,113 eventually restored to the upper the dams, but not above. Type 2 MG 09-52 Fish Carcass Toss for Klamath River basin. affects coho salmon and is found in Stream Nutrient Supplement, Ceratomyxa shasta is found in the lower and upper river system, Clackamas River Basin some waters of the Pacific but only causes mortality in the Council, $2,000 Northwest and has two life cycle lower river. Type 0 infects redband stages. First, it infects a small trout and steelhead and is also aquatic worm the size of an eyelash, found below and above the dams. Calendar called a polychaete worm. The Researchers have long known the parasite multiplies in the worm and parasite was present in the upper Dec. 3 R&E projects to OR F&W Commission for is released as spores into the water. basin but do not know if it has approval, Portland In the next stage, salmon and always been there or has spread steelhead are infected when they further upstream. Why the type 2 Dec. 10 STAC Mini-Grant come into contact with these spores. strain found in the lower river kills Applications Due When the fish die, more spores are coho salmon but the same strain in Dec. 17 R&E grant released back into the water, the upper river does not is also an applications due beginning the cycle anew. For the unknown, although Dr. Jerri parasite to survive and reproduce, Bartholomew of the OSU Jan. 7-8 STAC Meeting Coos Bay both the polychaete worm and Department of Microbiology, who is salmonids must be present. leading the research project, thinks Feb. 4 R&E Board Meeting Fish infected with Ceratomyxa that current laboratory studies Salem shasta suffer from hemorrhaging might eventually yield more clues. Feb. 25 STAC Mini-Grant and damage to internal organs, In addition, although disease free Applications Due often resulting in death. when they are stocked in the The parasite has long been known Williamson River, hatchery rainbow March 25 STAC Meeting Tillamook to inhabit the lower Klamath River trout may later be infected with the below the four hydroelectric dams — type 2 strain and become hosts for April 28-30 R&E Board Meeting Irongate, Copco 1, Copco 2 and J.C. the parasite. Troutdale Boyle — and has been implicated in Plans to remove the four dams on a number of salmon die-offs. The the lower Klamath River beginning Oregon FishWorks will soon last survey for Ceratomyxa shasta in in 2020 are in progress. If that go to electronic distribution the Williamson River was in 1988, comes to fruition, then efforts will only. Watch future issues when large numbers of fish were be made to restore salmon and infected. steelhead runs in the upper basin. It for more details. Beginning in 2008, OSU graduate will be important for fisheries student Charlene Hurst is spending managers to know what kinds of STeP on the Web the summer months collecting water pathogens the fish may encounter www.dfw.state.or.us/STeP samples and looking for polychaete as they re-colonize their former worms to determine their presence range to develop appropriate r&e Program on the Web and density in the Williamson and management and restoration www.dfw.state.or.us/fish/re its tributaries. strategies. Long Tom Watershed Council to Recent R&E Grants Enhancement study coastal cutthroat trout No. 09-196 Loren’s Pond Enhancement Project Beginning this fall the Long Tom Watershed Council will begin a research Phase I, $23,825 project to unravel the mysteries of lower Long Tom River cutthroat trout and No. 09-227 Long Tom River their life history. The R&E Program has provided a grant of nearly $30,000 Cutthroat Trout to help fund the project. Migration Study, Although cutthroat trout make $29,945 up the primary recreational No. 09-235 Clatsop County fishery on the lower river, a great Fisheries and Sandy deal about them is not well known, Coho Fish Food, including many aspects of their life $20,000 history such as genetic diversity, Restoration seasonal migration patterns and No. 09-225 Chetco River Chinook the proportion of the Willamette Salmon Coded Wire Tag River cutthroats that spawn in the Study, $13,125 Long Tom River system. 09-226 Irrigon Hatchery 8-inch The study calls for capturing Fish Pump, $23,500 1,000 cutthroats by electrofishing, seine nets, hoop traps, and hook The lower Long Tom River cutthroat trout 09-228 Mann Lake Treatment to and line. The captured fish will be study will help increase the knowledge base of Remove Invasive Goldfish, this culturally important trout species. fitted with Passive Integrated $80,042 Transponder (PIT) tags and their movements tracked from fixed stations on 09-231 Siletz Falls Trap Structure the lower river and its three main tributaries — Bear, Furguson, and and Cable Upgrade, $7,300 Rattlesnake creeks. Antennas at the stations will be able to determine which 09-232 South Coast Fall Chinook direction the fish are heading as they pass by. The project will also look at Spawning Surveys,$15,368 whether the fish are encountering any passage difficulties. The fish in the Long Tom River system are fluvial coastal cutthroat trout, 09-233 Tenmile Lakes Coho Creel meaning they live in larger rivers but move into smaller tributaries to Survey, $19,135 spawn. Coastal cutthroat trout are found in a 100-mile band along the 09-234 Big Creek Hatchery Valve Pacific Coast from the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska to the Eel River in Replacement, $4,500 California. There are three other species of cutthroat trout from which the coastal cutthroats have been evolutionarily separated for about one million years — westslope cutthroat trout, Yellowstone cutthroat trout, and Lahontan cutthroat trout.