Coho at Pudding Creek - Pics

Hi All:  I'm feeling like I need to start posting again, and I've got a bunch of pics of the study I'm working on.  So here goes:

As many of you guys know, I'm working on a study of coho and steelhead in the streams around Fort Bragg.  Coho, as everyone is probably aware, are not doing well at all in California.  Last winter we only counted 10 spawners in the stream, which is down from nearly 1200 in the winter of 2004-2005.  Oh, I almost forgot:  The central stream of our study is Pudding Creek, because its got a dam with a counting structure (fish ladder) in it.  This year we've counted about 200 spawners - better than last year, but not as good as we'd like.

Here's a pic looking upstream from the dam.  It looks pretty nice until you realize that all that green sh*t is non-native parrot feather - an escaped aquarium plant.

Here's crew leader Chris with a decent male.

Close up

A shaky shot of a nice male.  Notice the developed kype.  This guy is mad as hell.

Someone's finger pointing to a maxillary bone clip, which was applied when this hen was a smolt.

The tags on the dorsal are floy tags.  These fish are recovering after being tagged.

Chris fishing

Female in the processing tray.  We cover their heads to calm them down.

This is called an opercullum punch. It doesn't harm the fish, but it gives us a way to determine tag-loss on the floy tags.

A floy tag.

Releasing a pissed off, biting and snarling buck.

Fishing.

Seal bite.

Max Clip.

Scanning for a PIT tag, which are RFID tags, like the one's the vet puts in your dog.

Emily with a dark one.

Into the recovery area.

Jake fishing one up in the ladder.

Another buck.

Hen getting released.

Nice one.

A seal almost completely severed the tail on this one.

Pretty.

Nice color on this buck.

Well that's about it without getting too repetitive.  The take home message is that coho are doing better than last year, but they're not out of the woods by a long shot.  Hope you enjoyed the pics.


Dave

Thanks Dave just what I needed with the Russian turned to Pudding

Dave,
Thanks for the post and the great pics.

Nice work!  Thanks for the report and pictures Dave.

Awesome.  Thanks so much for sharing all that, and it's great to see ya.   

thank you for the great pictorial report dave, loved it, those were some good looking fish, hopefully we will see greater returns in the future, cameron

Thanks for the walk-thru Dave. It's good to hear from you, Keep up the good work!
   Randall

love the report. Keep up the great work guys

A truly magnificent fish. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the report and update Dave, very much appreciated!   

Nice pics.  Anything we can do to help?  I recall you talking about some opportunities ...

-Allen

Nice work Dave. Thats got to be rewarding seeing fish at all. Wheres Yoshi? In the stream fishing?

Dave, thanks for the killer pics of the smokers. Hope all is well in your world & Happy New Year too! jim

Nice photos and story and great to hear they're headed in the right direction. Very curious so hope you don't mind a few questions. So if I'm getting this right you guys are tagging at a ladder and then will look for their carcasses up river post spawn. What kind of info will you be looking for?

Z

That's what I'm talking about!   

thx for the solid porn-filled update.