Hello Folks,
As people are catching some hatchery Coho in the Strait I wanted to make a plug for everyone to turn in all the heads that they get from clipped fish. It is always important to turn in heads for the coded wire tag information that they may contain. However, I know that many clipped Coho do not contain CWTs and that anglers can get discouraged turning them in and getting no information on their river of origin. Two extra reasons to turn in your heads:
At the moment there is large project going on as part of the parental based tagging of salmon at BC hatcheries. Basically genetic data are collected from all broodstock and this allows hatchery fish caught in the ocean to be identified not just to hatchery but in many cases to the individual parents. All Coho heads turned in will be analyzed as part of this program whether or not they contain a tag, so you will be contributing valuable data.
Also, the selfish reason is that we at UVic are planning a project to analyze how early marine growth may impact whether Coho are resident in the SoG in their second ocean summer or stay outside. So we will be getting all otoliths from Coho heads turned in from the SoG (except areas 28 and 29) prior to the end of July. We need a good sample to make the project worthwhile.
So tight lines in your Coho fishing and submit those heads!
As people are catching some hatchery Coho in the Strait I wanted to make a plug for everyone to turn in all the heads that they get from clipped fish. It is always important to turn in heads for the coded wire tag information that they may contain. However, I know that many clipped Coho do not contain CWTs and that anglers can get discouraged turning them in and getting no information on their river of origin. Two extra reasons to turn in your heads:
At the moment there is large project going on as part of the parental based tagging of salmon at BC hatcheries. Basically genetic data are collected from all broodstock and this allows hatchery fish caught in the ocean to be identified not just to hatchery but in many cases to the individual parents. All Coho heads turned in will be analyzed as part of this program whether or not they contain a tag, so you will be contributing valuable data.
Also, the selfish reason is that we at UVic are planning a project to analyze how early marine growth may impact whether Coho are resident in the SoG in their second ocean summer or stay outside. So we will be getting all otoliths from Coho heads turned in from the SoG (except areas 28 and 29) prior to the end of July. We need a good sample to make the project worthwhile.
So tight lines in your Coho fishing and submit those heads!
