It’s the first Friday in October — officially, “Septober” for us steelheaders. Unfortunately, steelhead runs across much of the West Coast have been down this year, and now there is another blob of warm water in the North Pacific. Things don’t look good right now, but wild steelhead have withstood these types of conditions before. As long as we …
Idaho needs your help on steelhead catch and release study
I’ve never given much thought to what happens to a steelhead after a successful release. I guess, Iike most anglers I assumed it ran upriver to spawn and die. Or if it’s one of the very lucky few, it might pull off a second spawn. For those of you that have been losing sleep over the years, worrying about what …
The Choice for Hatchery Residual Steelhead
Do you know that not all hatchery steelhead smolts actually migrate to the ocean? Some remain in freshwater. Either way, these O. mykiss face a future that could be heroic (survive long enough to mate with a wild steelhead adult female) — or not-so-heroic (survive the summer in freshwater but perish during the difficult conditions of the winter). We …
A Genetic Basis for Summer and Winter Steelhead – a follow up
By Charlie Schneider We’re going to bring things full circle this week, with a look at how emerging science can meld with policy and restoration efforts to help reach our ultimate goal of improving steelhead runs. A previous SF post (http://www.wildsteelheaders.org/much-at-stake-in-listing-decision-on-northern-california-summer-steelhead/ ) highlighted the petition to list summer steelhead on the Eel River in Northern California, and discussed …
Lessons from a steelhead rescue and captive rearing program on California’s Carmel River
By: Natalie Stauffer-Olsen, Staff Scientist, TU’s California Science Program One of the things that I have always admired most about O. mykiss is how adaptable and resilient they are. The rainbow trout, in both its resident and anadromous forms, evolved to take advantage of the most abundant habitats for their different life history stages as well as the genetic …
A follow up to last week’s post: What is happening to steelhead in Hood Canal?
Last week we reviewed a study on a novel hatchery steelhead program that was implemented in a Hood Canal stream to help save and rebuild a population of wild steelhead that were on the brink. As part of the post, we highlighted the non-traditional methods that were used and why those may have helped the program increase abundance even after …
Science Friday: Can innovative methods for a wild broodstock hatchery rebuild a depleted wild population
This week we send you off with a review of a recent before-and-after study on hatchery steelhead published by Barry Berejikian and Donald Van Doornick (find the study here). The goal of this long-term study, conducted in a handful of rivers in Hood Canal, Washington, was to determine if a well-designed hatchery program could help rebuild populations of steelhead that …
Science Friday: Deschutes River (Oregon) rainbow and steelhead, how much do they overlap during spawning?
First Friday of the New Year, and we are serving up a fresh batch of steelhead science to help you further appreciate the remarkable relationship between resident and sea-going forms of O. mykiss. In this post, we review a study published in 2000 by Christian Zimmerman and Gordie Reeves, two scientists that have contributed a great deal to our …
Trouble in Idaho
By Michael Gibson: No matter how you frame it, wild steelhead in Idaho are in big trouble. While wild steelhead numbers have never really rebounded—as expected—after the listing of the species in 1997, 2017 and 2018 returns have been exceptionally poor. In 2017, fewer than 12,000 wild fish cleared Lower Granite Dam, the last of the lower …
The Maury Povich Steelhead Show: You are all the father
Took a short break from our Science Friday posts to do some actual science (on Olympic Peninsula winter steelhead) and to weigh in on some important policy issues. But now, like anglers looking for fresh winter chrome: we’re b-a-a-a-c-k. As you know, in the Science Friday forum we discuss a wide range of topics important to the management and …