Fishing with Rod Discussion Forum
Fishing in British Columbia => General Discussion => Topic started by: clarki on June 17, 2025, 10:21:44 PM
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Over the past three years, I have participated in coho fry salvage operations on the Little Campbell River. I posted about it here two years ago https://www.fishingwithrod.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=44977.msg425641#msg425641
Last year, I had a real eye opening experience on how closely related the river and the groundwater are.
My partner and I visited this pool which is ~5 ft deep at its deepest (It's a very unusual feature in this river and we suspect that it was excavated many years ago. Neighbouring landowners that we have talked to spoke about it being their local swimming hole when they were kids).We wanted to keep an eye on the pool as it was too deep to beach seine at this point, but it likely held a large number of fry.
(https://i.imgur.com/PgVDHsS.jpg)
We returned to check on it 8 days later, and is was bone dry. :(
(https://i.imgur.com/7zfCKj8.jpg)
All that water didn't just evaporate. I'm not a hydrologist but it seems apparent that increased agricultural and residential groundwater use during the summer quickly lower the aquifer levels.
(https://imgur.com/7zfCKj8)
This year, the river has already started to disconnect and the organization that I volunteer with participated in salvage ops last Friday and netted ~10K fish.
I joined them today, along with DFO and Salish Sea Indigenous Guardians Association and we seined a number of disconnected pools and rescued perhaps another 10K. Maybe more, maybe less....it's really hard to guesstimate a black cloud of fish in a tank!
(https://i.imgur.com/ECitBxo.jpg)
We netted a number of juvenile coastal cutthroat that were ~6" in size plus a number of trout fry, some that were ID'd as rainbow/steelhead, but others that we suspect were cutthroat also. Also a number of larger chinook fry which is unusual as chinook in this river head to the ocean in the late spring at just a few months old. DNA samples were taken of these fish.
We also netted a large number of pumpkinseed sunfish which were delivered the heel of our boots.
A very productive, worthwhile morning, but the work is just starting. There are other pools that need salvaging, but also many that we will never get to in time.
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Nice work clarki