Day 278 – Fishing for boulders

October 4, 2016 – At least once every fall, I try to get to each of the facilities I support. Some are more challenging to get to than others, simply because of distance. The Conuma River Hatchery lies about 50km down a logging road past Gold River and sits at the edge of Nootka Sound on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. It takes me about 7 hours by vehicle to get here, so I usually try to stay two nights so I can get a day and a half out here. Usually half a day is spent at the hatchery, and then, hopefully, if the weather cooperates, I can join in on a day seining for fish out at one of the rivers they work.

Today was a new adventure, tidal seining at Moutcha Bay, and the tide was flooding. There was a huge school of adult chum just off the beach; one of the staff had run a drone over the area and seen them holding out off the shore and a judgement call was made to see what we could get. The problem with chum, and other salmon, is that they will hold until there is a rain event. The rain will send them rushing up-river….and often out of the reach of the people there to collect them for brood. And since there was rain in the forecast for a few days, there was a pervasive uncertainty of whether or not the staff would be able to meet their egg targets if those fish passed them by.

So out we went, on a rising tide, to see what we could get.

Two boats herded the school towards shallower water, and a 150′ net was deployed. The estimate was that we managed to corner about 15-20% of the school. And then the “fun” began. The bay is littered with boulders, large and small. And the bottom is mucky, the shore slimy, and the rocks covered with barnacles…barnacles that love to snag nets.

All of that makes for quite the challenge when your net is filled with probably over a thousand frantic fish seeking escape, and your job is to get them from the net and into a floating holding pen at the same time they are seeking escape.

Oh, and did I mention the rising tide?

And by the way, that rising tide means the water is getting deeper, and you waders are slowly becoming less effective as the water level and the top of your waders creep ever closer to each other…

Oh, and there are large and frantic fish constantly torpedoing into your shins… that feels awesome!

No one stayed dry, and we all ingested more salt than any of us cared to.

But we did manage to get about 500’ish fish into the transport tanks and sent back to the hatchery for holding.

After that adventure we did something much more sedate and drove a short distance to Canton Creek where we all cleaned ourselves of salt and spawned 30 or 40 pairs of chum on the river bank and collected a number of chum and coho for transport back to the hatchery for holding.

It was a wet and exhausting day.

But it is also another example of the fabulous work the people in the Salmonid Enhancement Program do, year in and year out. I have nothing but admiration for the staff at the hatcheries.