Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Waterfalls, Cliffs, and Cutthroat. All in a day’s work.


E-fishing doesn’t sound that hard, right? You just have to walk through 100 meters of stream and scoop up all the fish you stun. No biggie. The hidden challenge is getting to the sites. Armed with our trusty GPS, we look for the easiest way to get to the stream from the car. Sometimes it’s an easy hundred meters. Most of the time it’s a lot farther.

Gorgeous Waterfall on Wyoming Creek

Last week we headed into Wyoming Creek, in Targhee National Forest. We followed a deer trail for a while, which was pretty easy-going, but then the banks of the creek turned to cliffs, and we realized we needed to walk up the stream in order to reach our site.  We put on our waders, only to realize that Chase managed to grab two left wader boots. He managed to stuff his neoprene cover feet into his Chacos, and we started splashing upstream, only to hit a series of 10 ft. waterfalls. We managed to climb over the first one with our gear, but the second was above a deep pool. Time to improvise. Luckily Charlie, the resident rock climber, had some webbing and carabineers in his pack, so Matt climbed up and we hauled our gear up and over the cliff next to the falls, and then scrambled up ourselves.  All in all, our site was only 1 km as the crow flies. Unfortunately we are not crows, and the trek took us over 2 hours.



Hauling our e-fisher up the cliff
Two left shoes :( 






















Our next stop was Squirrel Creek, which is pretty close to Ashton.  Our first site was right off the road, and we were excited for what we though was going to be an easy day.  We started hiking in to the second site and it wasn’t too bad: we just had to walk around a swamp. Suddenly we broke through an aspen grove and found ourselves on the edge of a cliff, looking down at the creek far below. We were momentarily stumped because there was no way we were going to be able to climb down safely, much less get back up. Hmmmm. With a little scouting, we found a tiny break in the cliff that was less steep, and made it down to the bottom in one piece.  Found some great looking cutthroat at the bottom, so the adventure was all worth it!


Nessa and a Cutthroat from Squirrel Creek


Stopping Erosion with Native Plants


A few weeks ago we teamed up with North Fork Native Plants and Intermountain Aquatics to restore a portion of bank on the lower Henry’s Fork. They have done several restorations in the past and have determined a method based on trial and error. The status quo for stopping erosion is to use large rocks, which works when the natural substrate of the river is rocky, but is not effective in sandy riverbeds because the rocks are just washed away. Rocks also do nothing to re-establish native vegetation. 
Bio-logs
Partially restored bank
            Instead of rocks we used organic materials and native plants to secure the banks. After an excavator had leveled the steep slope, we staked down a burlap cloth made of biodegradable coconut fibers on the tow of the slope.  Above this, we dug a huge trench and dropped in bio-logs. Bio-logs are pre-planted with a mixture of native grasses and young willows and are given their cylindrical structure by more burlap. After the bio-logs, we planted coyote willows of various sizes, and a mixture of hawthorn, currant, roses, and snowberries. As Katie Salsbury of North Fork Native Plants explained, diversity is the best insurance policy when it comes to successful restoration.

Check out the awesome video that Matt put together about our week! Watch it to the end, it gets really good.



Sunday, July 8, 2012

Catching our First Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout!


Hiking in all of our gear
This week we electro-fished the wonderfully named Jackass Creek in Grand Targhee National Park. The sites we were surveying had only been electro-fished once before and the notes on how to find the sights were pretty vague. One description informed us that the beginning of a unit was near a “large split pine”. There were around a million large split pines on the creek. Luckily, we had some GPS coordinates. Unluckily, the first day, we plugged in the wrong coordinates and spent around an extra hour crashing through the woods before we realized we had hiked way too far carrying all of our heavy gear. Oops. On the bright side, the wildlife sightings were great! We saw a baby skunk, some snakes, a bird’s nest, and best of all; Matt found a full set of epic moose antlers!!
Yellowstone Cutthroat!
     
Hands down, the stars of the show at Jackass Creek were the Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout.  These were the first YCT we’ve caught this summer and they are stunning fish. We learned that the population at Jackass creek is unique because it is the only pure and original YCT population left in the Henry’s Fork Watershed. The rest of the watershed has non-native brook or rainbow trout mixed in, or has been seeded from Yellowstone Lake. The fish we caught were incredibly wild and very difficult to measure and keep in the bucket. We also caught more of them than had been caught the last time this creek was surveyed, so that is potentially very good news for the cutthroats.  It was exciting to explore  this remote part of the watershed full of bear signs and cutthroats. 
Matt and the Antlers
Bird’s Nest



Gillnetting Island Park Reservoir


The other day we met up with some great folks from Fish and Game (Greg, Jamie, and Jordan) and helped them survey the fish populations in Island Park Reservoir.  They had put down ten huge nets at various sites the night before, and we pulled them out in the morning.  We brought the nets over to the shore and set about detangling the fish. Gillnets are appropriately named because the fish’s gills get tangled in the holes when they try to swim past. Untangling them without mutilating them was a little tricky, but we had to be careful because we needed to accurately measure the length of each fish.


Fish and Game has been tracking fish populations in the Island Park Reservoir for a while, so the data we were collecting will help them determine population trends. For each fish we weighed and measured them. For the few rainbow trout we caught we also collected the otoliths aka the ear bones. Charlie was able to pull them out in a record 11 seconds! All in all we caught close to 1,000 fish, mostly suckers and chubs. One little kokanee also made it into a net!  Working with Fish and Game was super fun; they treated us to a delicious lunch and taught us the difference between the types of fish.  Hopefully we can grab a few more beautiful days out on the water with them. 

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Canoe Craziness

So far it's been one adventure after another out here in Idaho.  A few weeks ago, Spencer, Chase, and I went out on a canoe trip on the Warm River, which was a lot of fun! There was a little whitewater and we saw an osprey and some fish jumping.  The float was nice until we got to the end and realized Chase had left his keys to the car where we pulled out in the Suburban where we put in.  Spencer hitchhiked back to town to grab his car and rescue us, but then his keys were in the Suburban too! Anne Marie was called and gallantly rescued us, which proved for an interesting story, one of many this summer I'm sure!

Monday, June 11, 2012

Findings on the Buffalo


So the interns are starting to move in for work this summer, which I think we are all excited about!!  On the Buffalo River the other day, HFF counted and measured the number of fish in the outmigrant trap and fish ladder trap around the hydroelectric dam. Joining this process with Matt Cahoon and Anne Marie Emery for the first time were me, Kendra Sultzer, and another of Henry's Fork Foundation interns for the summer, Chase Douglas. Along with measuring and counting the number of fish, we encountered a few other species. Collecting the organic matter from the top of the screens leading to the outmigrant trap, we found a giant water bug, or Belostomatidae. We released it back into the river, but it didn't want to leave the pavement and clung to the edge. Watch the video below and keep following to read about more exciting experiences throughout the summer!