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[clarki]

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.



We returned to check on it 8 days later, and is was bone dry.



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.



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!



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.

[bigsnag]

Nice work clarki

[salmonrook]

Great work
Always happy to see this little productive river get some more help.
Always happy to talk about the Little Campbell
The Chinook you rescued might have been from the hatchery
That section of river has several disjointed water sources including a catchment pond controlled by the city and runoff from nearby Latimer lake, this being replenished by a pump station opposite the Tim Norton's on 192 .
Of course the other flow comes from Langley under neath 200th ST.
Both local governments should take a more serious approach trying to maintain the water flow .

[fisherforever]

 I used to own a 5 acre parcel on 2nd ave and 212th in south Langley 25 years ago with a tributary of the Little Campbell on my property. Coho and cutthroat trout used to come through my property and spawn. Enjoyed showing that to my kids when they were small. Unfortunately someone bought the property in front of mine to put a large greenhouse and they dug out the creek for property drainage that was the end of the coho and cutthroat as there was a 8' foot drop in elevation from my property to where they dug out the creek. It took quite a few years for the land to erode away to allow the cutthroat to return but the coho never did.  It's sad what is happening to smaller lower mainland streams.

[clarki]

Great work
Always happy to see this little productive river get some more help.
Always happy to talk about the Little Campbell
The Chinook you rescued might have been from the hatchery
That section of river has several disjointed water sources including a catchment pond controlled by the city and runoff from nearby Latimer lake, this being replenished by a pump station opposite the Tim Norton's on 192 .
Of course the other flow comes from Langley under neath 200th ST.
Both local governments should take a more serious approach trying to maintain the water flow .

I don't think the chinook fry was from the hatchery. It wasn't clipped and was salvaged 4-5 km above the hatchery.

But you're right about maintaining water flow. In Surrey, the city pumps groundwater into Elgin Creek (via the existing stormwater system) at 30 litres/second to augment low seasonal flows. I wonder if something similar would be feasible on the LC.

Interestingly, the Township of Langley, in their Fernridge Neighbourhood plan (the LC runs right through the Fernridge area), has adopted larger setbacks along the river. This is great news for the river but not so great news for landowners. One landowner we know has had his property devalued significantly because his home sits within the new setback distance.

Conversely, the City of Surrey is decreasing setbacks

[clarki]

Did another salvage operation on Friday. This one a bit smaller in scope but we still netted several thousand coho, umpteen sunfish, some large sculpins, lots of stickleback, and this 17 cm cutthroat trout.


The haul...

[RalphH]

This is great stuff though it makes me wonder what the cause of this dewatering is? Makes me think of Norrish creek and some action lead to a change.


https://globalnews.ca/news/11266236/norrish-creek-gravel-mining-halt/

[Wiseguy]

Great great work! I like Ralph’s post. Contact my friend retired fisheries biologist Marvin Rosenau to come out and have a look. He’s a champion for local habitat protection and restoration.

[hammer]

Very good post....
Those sunfish are everywhere

[clarki]

This is great stuff though it makes me wonder what the cause of this dewatering is? Makes me think of Norrish creek and some action lead to a change.


https://globalnews.ca/news/11266236/norrish-creek-gravel-mining-halt/

It seems clear to me that the cause of the dewatering is related to groundwater levels.  There seems to be no other explanation for a pool in a river to drop over a foot overnight (last year we netted a pool and left a baited minnow trap overnight to catch stragglers; when we returned the next morning the trap was high and dry and the fry inside were dead). Or for the deep pool that I posted pics of earlier in this thread to dry up completely in a week's time.

The organization that I volunteer with has been tracking the length and duration of the dry reach since 2018 and we understand that it's been happening since the 1970's. But it's curious...the river is wetted further upstream in Campbell Valley Park and it's wetted below the dry reach due to groundwater but in between there's this couple of km long stretch that dries up as early as June to as late as November.

This blog post explains more:
 
https://arocha.ca/the-dry-reach-an-impassable-barrier/

[clarki]

I thought I'd keep this thread going with additional fry salvage activities over the past week.

On Friday June 27 we visited the pool that I posted the pics of in my first post. The pool wasn't as full as in the first pic, but it still had a substantial amount of water in it and was about 4 feet deep at its deepest point. It was too deep and wide to net effectively but we made several passes with the net and carried out three buckets of fry.

From past experience we knew that the water would drop quickly so we came back on Monday June 30 to scout and see how it was faring. We were surprised to see the water had gone from chest deep to knee deep over the weekend. There was a salvage operation planned for Wed July 2 but we knew the water wouldn't last that long. There were loads of fry in the rapidly drying pool so we returned with a net, buckets and bubblers and set about netting. There was only two of us and it was too arduous to make multiple trips back to the truck so we netted the pool and transferred the fish to an upstream pool knowing that we would be returning with a full crew just two days later on July 2.

Here I am contemplating the pool before we started



We netted and bucketed many, many fry from that little puddle to the upstream pool. But we also got a number of trout, including one mature cutthroat that was easily 30 cm long. Curious why he was still in the river and hadn't gone to the sea.

We returned on Wed July 2 with a full crew including a family of indigenous guardians from SSIGA (Salish Sea Indigenous Guardians Association)

This was what was left of the pool that the two of us netted two days earlier



Good thing we got to it when we did!

This is the pool upstream that we moved the fish to



It had a lot more water two days earlier on Monday; the water was into the grass on the right. We measured the dissolved oxygen levels and it was ~ 5 mg/l (8-13 is optimal). Water was dropping quickly here too. We left a couple of battery powered bubblers in the water on Monday and when we returned on Wednesday the bubblers were sill running but they were high and dry.

While part of the crew netted, others ran a bucket brigade along the dry river bed, I stayed at the truck to empty buckets and keep an eye on the DO levels and the flow of oxygen from the tank.

This is what the tank looked like when we were about 2/3 done. Absolutely chock full of fry



Every bucket I emptied I kept watching for that big cutthroat that we had moved two days earlier. I really hoped the crew would recapture him. And they did! Here he is on the left side of the tank



Hard to tell how many fry we salvaged; easily several thousand.

So far I've been part of three salvage operations, and there was one that I missed. In those four operations, I'm guessing we've salvaged 10's of thousands of fry.  I don't know how many coho fry the Semiahmoo Fish and Game Club hatchery produces (one article says 30,000 but @salmonrook would know better) but we are salvaging a significant percentage of the number of fry that the hatchery produces. Just shows how important good habitat is! 

[salmonrook]

I  have heard discussions with DFO about the water levels on the LC over its length and they had the same thought about the  water table during the summer dropping  below surface level while still flowing in the gravel underneath.
 I have done several scouting trips looking for other sources of water for the LC above the Arocha property .
Its seems there are a few but they are encroached and regulated by the City.
Some being run from pump stations coming from Latimer lake .
Its unfortunate but I know for a fact that they de watered the area next to the lake when they built the new gas station and McDonalds on 192 .
 Its maddening that the city just allows all this work with no thought about impacts . [/size][/size]