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[VAGAbond]

When I was a kid in the Courtenay area back in the Stone Age, we occasionally fished Comox Lake.  Never did very well but we did catch a few silvery Salmonidae about 9 inches long.   These were identified as rainbow as nobody was familiar with Kokanee.  Thinking back I have realized these were Kokanee.

I checked the BC gov inventory of fish and sure enough there are Kokanee recorded for Comox Lake and even a very few Sockeye in the Puntledge river.

That got me wondering about whether there was a significant run of Sockeye before the dam was constructed at the lake outlet at the beginning of the twentieth century.   Does anybody know?

[RalphH]

Did salmon and maybe do they still have access to Comox Lake? I can't find anything that says they did even before the dam. The only info on the BC Hydro website is that young salmon can get safely by the downstream diversion dam. If there are kokanee sockeye must have once been able to access the area above the existing dam. In some lakes fish that look like kokanee are actually 'residualized' coho smolts that stay in the lake rather than migrating to the sea.

Correction: per this website there is a fishway into Comox Lake: https://gateway.katherinebickford.ca/comox-lake-the-other-side-of-the-dam/

[VAGAbond]

I got as far as understanding that Kokanee in the lake indicated prior access by Sockeye.  What I was wondering if any members of long time resident families can recall great grandfather expounding on the great sockeye run there used to be up the Puntledge before the dam was built in 1913 or whether it was always a minimal run barely surviving and not much noticed.

If it was once a great run, I begin to wonder if it could be restored and why it has not regenerated on its own given the fish access.  I suspect the Kokanee population in the lake is minimal, perhaps indicating it is not great sockeye habitat.  Any comments on that?