Over the past few weeks it has been unusually hot here in Klamath Falls. The worst being 102! So my fellow interns and I decided to spend July 4th on the coast. For a not well-planned trip it turned out amazingly. We lucked out and found a campsite not too far from the beach. And it was everything we had hoped for, the coast was cool, almost frigid and beautiful. The small town we were near put on a great fireworks display on the beach.
Cape Blanco
Off the pacific coast scenic byway
Back in Klamath falls, the area is still suffering from a 5 year drought. It was expected that water at the dams would be shut off at some point. Over the July fourth weekend the water was shut off at the Gerber dam. When the water is shut off fish get stranded at the base of the dam, especially larger fish, and if they are not removed will die. The Bureau of Reclamation took on the task of trying to salvage as many fish as possible. We got a chance to go out for a day and help them with their endeavor. They utilized trap nets in the large main pool below the dam and electrofished the smaller pools. Any fish caught were transported to above the dam where there would hopefully be enough water for the summer for them to survive.
Gerber Dam
Erica having fun saving some fish
Unfortunately this catfish didn’t make it
We were especially interested in any sucker fish caught. All suckers were photographed, measured, weighed, tagged and DNA samples taken. They are tagged with what’s called a pit tag, which is similar to what they use as microchips in dogs. The tag is placed right in the underbelly, above the anal fins. A small piece of anal fin was clipped for DNA analysis.
Sucker fish
Pit tagging
The next two weeks we spent trap netting in both Upper Klamath Lake and Tule Lake down in California. We are trying to catch suckers that had been released last year. The first week was disappointing. We didn’t catch any, but we did catch a variety of other species such as: blue chub, tui chub, fathead minnows, sculpins, perch, pumpkinseeds, black bullheads and rainbow trout. Attempts on Tule Lake were not very successful due to our motor not wanting to start when trying to head back to shore. We tried to paddle back to the boat launch, but the afternoon winds picked up, so we had to drift to the other edge of the lake and be rescued by our mentor. It was quite a long day.
Chub caught in one of our nets
This last week on Upper Klamath we caught four suckers in a single day, which is a pretty good catch. This size of sucker is not seen very often and is similar in size to the fish we have in our net pens.
Sucker caught in our trap nets
Over the weekend we finally made it to Crater Lake, which is practically in our backyard. You can hike about a mile down to the water to swim or jump off the cliffs. The water was a spectacular blue and of course freezing cold.
Crater Lake
