Day 9 Monday July 17^th 2017 (

Tshimikain Creek : Electro Fishing for Rainbow trout.

The Tshimikain was a small with various non-native and native species. The counts of Rainbow were high according to Program Manager Casey Flannigan.d Casey was a part of my crew and we had fun netting Rainbows, Brown Trout, Sculpin, suckers and pike minnow. Crew leader Nick (BUB) had us in waders as we trekked through between ¼ and ¾ of a meandering, up to 4 ½ feet deep running water.

The rainbows were analyzed for weight, length, genetics, and were PIT Tagged above 60 Millimeters. Casey was very insightful I got a chance to talk with her a bunch. Casey was working on her masters degree through Eastern Washington University and her research was on Redband Trout physiology; a nightmare of a thesis that required hours upon hours upon hours of monotonous lab work. Sheesh, basically it was an experiment that analyzed differences in size and change in size under certain conditions of Redband,,,,I can laugh and only imagine the extremely tough variables to analyze, not to mention the statistics involved.! I took away good information about the redband and the adaptations that take place during smoltification. Smoltification does not occur in all redband! I thought it very interesting that only a certain population turn anadromous and become steelhead. Apparently Scientists are still questioning what happens and/or does not happen to redband that allows or disallows certain fish to become steelhead. Also very interesting is the physiology of redband allows multiple spawning over a six year life cycle. Spawning itself can completely drain a steelhead or fish so much so that it can easily cause mortality in many other species of fish; and it does. The redband is a tough tough species and I have a new respect for them from talking with Casey; she also mentioned that the physiology and strength of the steelheads also allows the fish to survive very cold waters and very warm waters that kill many other aquatic biota. I walk away with new knowledge as a fisheries science enthusiast.