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.
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