Lake Lenore Lahontan Rescue - volunteers, anyone?

Buzzy · Apr 14, 2023

WDFW's @Mike_Schmuck sent me the enclosed photo. As you can see, the feeder stream and trap area is LOADED with trout.

Mike's looking for volunteers to help net, transport and relocate some of the fish. He's planning on having a state fish truck at the trap on Monday, April 17th at 10:00 AM.

Anyone? Anyone?

Thanks for looking.

Ps. WDFW's egg collection is complete for the year.

Peach · Apr 14, 2023

Relocate where?

Peach

Buzzy · Apr 14, 2023

Peach said:
Relocate where?

Peach

Great question, "further down lake".

Peach · Apr 14, 2023

I am not trying to be a smart ass, as I applaud the effort and love to see good causes like this to salvage a special breed of trout, I would probably like to volunteer if I lived closer, but wouldn't the trout just come back? Or is the thought that they have completed their "spawn" and moving them out of the feeder stream and trap, they will stay in the lake proper and not return?

Just curious.

Peach

Buzzy · Apr 15, 2023

Peach said:
I am not trying to be a smart ass, as I applaud the effort and love to see good causes like this to salvage a special breed of trout, I would probably like to volunteer if I lived closer, but wouldn't the trout just come back? Or is the thought that they have completed their "spawn" and moving them out of the feeder stream and trap, they will stay in the lake proper and not return?

Just curious.

Peach

Good morning - another great question. I've wondered exactly the same thing; what's to prevent these fish from swimming right back to the creek? Maybe distance? I don't know. What I do know is at least two years in recent times the creek has dried up or slowed to a trickle trapping many fish resulting in a fish kill. I hope this effort does save some fish while the urge to spawn passes and the fish aren't looking to swim upstream.

Buzzy · Apr 16, 2023

TTT - I hope @LakeGuy and I aren't the only two (old) volunteers....... ;-)

Old406Kid · Apr 16, 2023

Buzzy said:
TTT - I hope @Lakedude and I aren't the only two (old) volunteers....... ;-)

I wish I lived closer. How about members from the ML Fly Club?
Edit; I just looked at the date...guess it's kind of short notice now.

Buzzy · Apr 16, 2023

Old406Kid said:
I wish I lived closer. How about members from the ML Fly Club?
Edit; I just looked at the date...guess it's kind of short notice now.

I thought about asking the club's secretary to send out an email. I can't do it as she has the club membership's email addresses blocked and I suspect the time frame is too short.

Old406Kid · Apr 16, 2023

Buzzy said:
I can't do it as she has the club membership's email addresses blocked

Sad that society has reached this point with scammers and such. Our club did the same and it's what this forum had to do regarding OMJ.

Eastside · Apr 17, 2023

Sounds like a good project for an old guy like me but I’ve been fighting an cold all weekend and now am getting a sinus infection. Out for the count. Love to see a report on the event.

Buzzy · Apr 17, 2023

Eastside said:
Sounds like a good project for an old guy like me but I’ve been fighting an cold all weekend and now am getting a sinus infection. Out for the count. Love to see a report on the event.

Stay in, take care. Next time! It was 32F at our home this morning, I'm going to nitrile glove up and be layered....

Billy · Apr 17, 2023

Buzzy said:
TTT - I hope @Lakedude and I aren't the only two (old) volunteers....... ;-)

good for you old guys to stay limber

Irafly · Apr 17, 2023

10 times the support on a weekend, just saying

Buzzy · Apr 17, 2023

Billy said:
good for you old guys to stay limber

Ouch! Did my Yoga this morning.........

Irafly said:
10 times the support on a weekend, just saying

Yeah, excuses are dime a dozen ;-)

Shawn Seeger · Apr 17, 2023

Sorry, I don't live close and still limited lifting. I hope this works out! Thanks for sharing

Old406Kid · Apr 17, 2023

Shawn Seeger said:
Sorry, I don't live close and still limited lifting.

Wow, I never knew that catching and releasing a couple thousand pounds of fish since March 1st could do that to a guy.

Irafly · Apr 17, 2023

Buzzy said:
Yeah, excuses are dime a dozen ;-)

If I give you a dollar, could you make up 120 for me?

Old406Kid · Apr 17, 2023

Irafly said:
If I give you a dollar, could you make up 120 for me?

I get what you're saying about the weekend and volunteers but the WDFW guys, other than enforcement, are more M-F.

Buzzy · Apr 17, 2023

Seven volunteers (four from Wenatchee Valley Fly Fishers and three from Dry Side Flyfishers (Moses Lake)) showed up at Lake Lenore's fish trap to help Mike Schmuck, our regional fisheries biologist, net and transport trout caught in the "spawning" trap. The trap was loaded (crowded to say the least) with trout:

WDFW had one transport truck for the project. Trout were dip netted from the trap and loaded into the fish tank in the back of the truck. The fish tank is equipped with an O2 diffuser.

Rod Sand netting cutthroat trout ------^

Rod Sand with a net full of trout ------^ We gauged how many trout and how heavy the loaded net was by the number of grunts it took to get the net up to the top of the tank. Three grunts was about all I could help lift.

I don't know how old some of the Wenatchee Valley volunteers are but here's 86 year old Bob Levine with a net load of trout. ----^

Without being able to refill the fish transport tank with water after each loadout, Mike Schmuck instead netted the fish from the tank at the release site and handed the net to two of us who then passed it to two men at the pump channel shoreline. It was time consuming and very physically tiring. But I will say everyone of us enjoyed the day, no slackers!

Mike transported six truckloads of trout, five loads were netted from the tank and released into the channel shown above, the sixth tank load was released via the tank truck knife valve. Most of the fish, when released, immediately swam away but some were obviously stressed. I used a long handled net to nudge some of the fish that were stressed and witnessed almost everyone of them swim away.

How many fish did we handle today? It wasn't possible to accurately count the fish, there simply were too many fish and only one truck. I was trying to estimate and gauge how many per net, per truck load - my estimate was in excess of 1,200 trout.

Mike Schmuck with a 25-3/4" Lahontan cutthroat. ----^

A few parting thoughts - I think Mike Schmuck and WDFW are doing a great job with Lake Lenore, Mike cares deeply about this fishery. The lake obviously has a healthy population of trout. There were still many, many trout in the feeder stream; depending on stream flow and several other factors, Mike may want to do another fish rescue effort.

In the future, WDFW isn't going to use the trap for spawning purposes - they find it much quicker to set seines to collect the fish. Their egg/milt collection is done for 2023. In a perfect world, WDFW would be permitted and funded to construct an exclusion weir preventing the trout from ascending the creek where there's danger of become stranded and then suffocating: this project is on WDFW's planning agenda.

There's a chance WDFW may want to perform another one of these "rescue" days in the next week or so.

Oh yes - there were four pelicans very much interested in what we were doing at the release site, I hoped to see one scoop up a trout. I'm sure there are four pelicans sitting a bit lower in the water this afternoon.