New Summer, New Projects

It is hard to know where to start to start the blog with a whole new group of interns for the summer. There are five of us – one local intern and four from out of the area. Matt is the local intern and he went to BYU-Idaho. Eli and Thomas attend Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Katie is a rising senior at Colgate University in New York and Heidi graduated from Stanford University before coming out to Idaho for the summer. For the past two weeks, we’ve had a volunteer, Stuart, working with the crew. He is a rising high school senior in Salt Lake City.

Our biggest project so far this summer has been rebuilding the weir on Thurman Creek in Harriman

The group working on the weir

Eli working hard

State Park. We wanted to move it because the conditions were better down the creek about 100 feet. To make the weir, we set up metal frames, keeping them in place with rebar, and put metal poles through the holes in the frame. We didn’t have enough poles and frames to fill the wider part of the creek so we used rebar and plastic netting for most of one side. Since building the weir, we’ve been really successful in catching fish in the trap. The first day we checked the trap, we were all stunned by the number of crawdads in the trap. There were a couple hundred in there! We had to hold back the urge to take them home for dinner. In addition to the crawdads, there were a ton of sculpin and shiners, a few dace and chub, and a rainbow trout. Katie learned how to pit tag the trout, which I’m sure she’ll write about soon.

Other projects we’ve been working on include checking and cleaning the traps on the fish ladder on the Buffalo River, helping with landscaping at Harriman State Park, setting up for Henry’s Fork Day, and doing a creel survey along the Buffalo River. We’ll write about all those projects in detail soon!

It’s been a great summer to be an intern – the people are great, the weather is beautiful, and the work is fun. We are all looking forward to an amazing summer!