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[Clarki Hunter]

The program ended when they decided that the wild stocks should be allowed to reproduce and recover naturally .
Its not going to happen and the fishery on the Little Campbell was a catch and release for wild fish
 Maybe they thought the wild stocks would have a better gene pool without mixing with the hatchery fish

That's what they told us when we met with them. 

[canoeboy]

Not LC related but other tribs here in the LM. I myself have noticed over the last 3 years that I have caught significantly more and more cutthroat every salmon season. I've gone from maybe 3 or 4 a season to close to 20. This year is tracking nicely with 13.

[salmonrook]

Not LC related but other tribs here in the LM. I myself have noticed over the last 3 years that I have caught significantly more and more cutthroat every salmon season. I've gone from maybe 3 or 4 a season to close to 20. This year is tracking nicely with 13.

Are they wild or hatchery , I dont know if the other systems still have a cutthroat release like the LC did

[RalphH]

The program ended when they decided that the wild stocks should be allowed to reproduce and recover naturally .
Its not going to happen and the fishery on the Little Campbell was a catch and release for wild fish
 Maybe they thought the wild stocks would have a better gene pool without mixing with the hatchery fish

Hatchery supplementation of cutthroat in the Serpentine and Nicomekl stopped in the early 90s. Cutthroat are hanging in the there so requirement for a hatchery program is doubtful. Numbers seem to fluctuate on some sort of cycle of years. This year I believe there has been a bounce back relative to the last few years and I caught a reasonable number of smaller fish. over the 20+ years since stocking ended I had years when i caught far more fish in a season than i recall my father and i catching back in the 60s and early 70s. Larger fish, over 15 inches or so seem to have all but disappeared. Poaching may play a part. Those fish are really important as they contribute far more spawn and fry than smaller fish. I think cutthroat in these streams need a wild trout policy that would include a bait ban,extended closures and targeted habitat recovery.

The Province policy on enhancement of sea run cutthroat and steelhead call for use of wild brood stock only plus a minimum wild spawning population before wild fish are taken for brood. This was almost never achieved with SRCs

[salmonrook]

Further to the cutthroat , one came through the fish count today on the LC , its was wild , of course and pretty sure it was female .
About 12 inches , a beautiful fish , we thought at first that it was a chinook jack but the slash on the jaw and the curved jaws confirmed it .

[clarki]

So, a follow up on this project...

Semiahmoo Fish and Game Club hatchery staff/volunteers counted how many clipped and non clipped  chinook passed through the fish fence.  Throughout Oct and Nov, teams from  A Rocha walked an approx 4 km stretch of river from the hatchery to 24 Ave, counting and doing observations of clipped and non clipped chinook and doing a head recovery of clipped fish to recover any coded wire tag (CWT). This is what we recently learned from DFO:

• ~50 % of the clipped fish that passed the fence were recovered/counted
• ~18 % of non-clipped fish were recovered
• 3 of the clipped fish had CWTs
• 72 of the clipped fish didn't have CWTs
• all 3 fish with the CWTs came from the Samish River in WA state

The Samish River hatchery clips all chinook, but only tags approx 3-4%. Since their proportion of clipped tagged vs clipped untagged matches our recovery, DFO estimates that all the clipped fish in the LC in 2022 were from the Samish River.

Couple of things that I find interesting:
1) The Samish is about 50 km (as the crow flies) south and there are a couple of hatcheries that produce fall chinook that are closer to the Little Campbell than the Samish; the Whatcom Creek Hatchery in Bellingham and the Lummi Bay hatchery. Both are much closer to the LC than the Samish, so it's curious to me why only Samish fall chinook are showing up in the LC and not fish from the other two. (The Lummi Bay website says that they work cooperatively with Samish River and Whatcom Creek hatcheries so maybe that's part of it...)

2) We found almost three times as many clipped fish in the lower reaches of river than non clipped. It's interesting to me that non clipped fish shoot further upstream to spawn than clipped fish do.

[Darko]

So, a follow up on this project...

Semiahmoo Fish and Game Club hatchery staff/volunteers counted how many clipped and non clipped  chinook passed through the fish fence.  Throughout Oct and Nov, teams from  A Rocha walked an approx 4 km stretch of river from the hatchery to 24 Ave, counting and doing observations of clipped and non clipped chinook and doing a head recovery of clipped fish to recover any coded wire tag (CWT). This is what we recently learned from DFO:

• ~50 % of the clipped fish that passed the fence were recovered/counted
• ~18 % of non-clipped fish were recovered
• 3 of the clipped fish had CWTs
• 72 clipped of the clipped fish didn't have CWTs
• all 3 fish with the CWTs came from the Samish River in WA state

The Samish River hatchery clips all chinook, but only tags approx 3-4%. Since their proportion of clipped tagged vs clipped untagged matches our recovery, DFO estimates that all the clipped fish in the LC in 2022 were from the Samish River.

Couple of things that I find interesting:
1) The Samish is about 50 km (as the crow flies) south and there are a couple of hatcheries that produce fall chinook that are closer to the Little Campbell than the Samish; the Whatcom Creek Hatchery in Bellingham and the Lummi Bay hatchery. Both are much closer to the LC than the Samish, so it's curious to me why only Samish fall chinook are showing up in the LC and not fish from the other two. (The Lummi Bay website says that they work cooperatively with Samish River and Whatcom Creek hatcheries so maybe that's part of it...)

2) We found almost three times as many clipped fish in the lower reaches of river than non clipped. It's interesting to me that non clipped fish shoot further upstream to spawn than non clipped fish do.

very interesting! thanks for sharing

[salmonrook]

2) We found almost three times as many clipped fish in the lower reaches of river than non clipped. It's interesting to me that non clipped fish shoot further upstream to spawn than clipped fish do.

The hatchery fish are only returning to  the specific location where they were released .
All of the Chinook and Coho are released right at the hatchery and you'd be surprised how accurate they are returning in the fall .
In most cases the Coho even try to get back to the outlet pipe of the Coho pond where they are released .
Chinook and Wild Coho would spawn upstream of the hatchery after being released through the fish fence .
We did observe Coho spawning right below the fish fence but that was maybe to do low water conditions at the start of the season .

[clarki]

The hatchery fish are only returning to  the specific location where they were released .
All of the Chinook and Coho are released right at the hatchery and you'd be surprised how accurate they are returning in the fall .
In most cases the Coho even try to get back to the outlet pipe of the Coho pond where they are released .
Chinook and Wild Coho would spawn upstream of the hatchery after being released through the fish fence .
We did observe Coho spawning right below the fish fence but that was maybe to do low water conditions at the start of the season .

And I guess this comes back to our difference in understanding about the origin of the clipped fish…

DFO concluded that all of the clipped fish that returned to the Campbell last fall were likely to be Samish River origin. So it’s still interesting to me why more clipped fish were found in the 2-3 mile stretch of river upstream of the hatchery that we surveyed, than non clipped fish.

You make a good point about the draw of the hatchery. Since the Samish River hatchery is about 5 miles from the tidewater, perhaps Samish R fish are predisposed to only migrate a short distance upstream in the Campbell. The would put them right where we found them.

[salmonrook]

And I guess this comes back to our difference in understanding about the origin of the clipped fish…

DFO concluded that all of the clipped fish that returned to the Campbell last fall were likely to be Samish River origin. So it’s still interesting to me why more clipped fish were found in the 2-3 mile stretch of river upstream of the hatchery that we surveyed, than non clipped fish.

You make a good point about the draw of the hatchery. Since the Samish River hatchery is about 5 miles from the tidewater, perhaps Samish R fish are predisposed to only migrate a short distance upstream in the Campbell. The would put them right where we found them.

The clipped fish that you are quoting are just the Chinook as the Coho are clipped by the Little Campbell volunteers and they would be of Little Campbell origin .
 The  clipped Chinook that you recovered would have been released 3-4 years ago .
I dont believe that the Chinook were clipped back then by the LCH
Maybe some of the Samish Chinook are spending time in the Little Campbell estuary ?

[clarki]

The clipped fish that you are quoting are just the Chinook as the Coho are clipped by the Little Campbell volunteers and they would be of Little Campbell origin .
 The  clipped Chinook that you recovered would have been released 3-4 years ago .
I dont believe that the Chinook were clipped back then by the LCH

Correct. I’m just speaking about chinook. Yes, LCH didn’t used to clip their chinook so any clipped chinook that we recovered last fall were all strays from the Samish.

The recovery project that I’m participating is a three year project (2022-2024) as 2025 is when we expected to see the first returns of the chinook that were clipped by LCH this year.