sly_karma
Crew Member
Media piece this week notes good sockeye spawner counts in Shingle Creek, an Okanagan tributary that joins the river between the lakes in Penticton.
This is a direct outcome of the construction of the sockeye hatchery - located on this same creek - in 2014. During that same year, a small dam on the creek was removed as it was no longer used for distribution of irrigation water. Hatchery fry have been released by tanker truck upstream ever since in the knowledge that the creek's largely undeveloped streamside habitat was nearly perfect for spawning salmon.
Biologists working for the US hydroelectric funding partners view Shingle Creek as having the potential to build the Okanagan sockeye runs back to numbers not seen since European contact in the mid 19th century.
Would wild fish have found their way into Shingle Creek anyway? Probably, but it would have been very slow to develop without hundreds of thousands of fry placed there and coded to return.
The other fish passage improvement of note is the opening of Okanagan Lake also mentioned in the article. That will take several years to develop results, as before this year only token numbers of fry were released into the bigger drainage. Now that all levels of government have signed off, spring 2021 will see its first large scale sockeye fry release into selected creeks chosen for their spawning habitat potential.
Final note of good promise: decent Chinook counts returning to the Okanagan, according to the Fish Passage Centre:
The counts at Wells Dam can be considered mostly bound for the Okanagan system as there is no fish passage above on the main stem of the Columbia. Some of these Chinooks run up the Methow but plenty go into the Okanagan. I know the Penticton hatchery captured a lot of adults this October for brood stock.
New record as sockeye salmon came through Penticton Channel - Penticton News
Sockeye salmon numbers hit a new record in the Penticton Channel this year, with over 25,600 spawning fish swimming through in 2020.
www.castanet.net
This is a direct outcome of the construction of the sockeye hatchery - located on this same creek - in 2014. During that same year, a small dam on the creek was removed as it was no longer used for distribution of irrigation water. Hatchery fry have been released by tanker truck upstream ever since in the knowledge that the creek's largely undeveloped streamside habitat was nearly perfect for spawning salmon.
Biologists working for the US hydroelectric funding partners view Shingle Creek as having the potential to build the Okanagan sockeye runs back to numbers not seen since European contact in the mid 19th century.
Would wild fish have found their way into Shingle Creek anyway? Probably, but it would have been very slow to develop without hundreds of thousands of fry placed there and coded to return.
The other fish passage improvement of note is the opening of Okanagan Lake also mentioned in the article. That will take several years to develop results, as before this year only token numbers of fry were released into the bigger drainage. Now that all levels of government have signed off, spring 2021 will see its first large scale sockeye fry release into selected creeks chosen for their spawning habitat potential.
Final note of good promise: decent Chinook counts returning to the Okanagan, according to the Fish Passage Centre:
7 Day and YTD Adult Counts
The Fish Passage Center (FPC) provides current and historic data on salmon and steelhead passage in the main stem Snake and Columbia river basins. Data from the Smolt Monitoring Program (SMP) is intended to provide the information basis for federal, state and tribal recommendations for fish...
www.fpc.org
The counts at Wells Dam can be considered mostly bound for the Okanagan system as there is no fish passage above on the main stem of the Columbia. Some of these Chinooks run up the Methow but plenty go into the Okanagan. I know the Penticton hatchery captured a lot of adults this October for brood stock.
