Document text
Mark Freeman Commentary Outdoors Biologists advance to high-tech tabulating By MARK FREEMAN For 30 years, the drill has been the same for gathering tidbits of information about the Rogue River's famous run of halfpounder steelhead. Four state seasonal employees use a powerboat and a pickup to set and drag a mammoth net through the Rogue at Huntley Park about three miles east of the Rogue's mouth at Gold Beach. The salmon and steelhead captured in the nets are counted, measured and released, with the data scribbled on sheets of paper clamped onto clipboards and later crunched to spit out estimates of the halfpounder run. But this basic muscle-and-pencil biology now has a new wrinkle -- halfpounder counting has gone high-tech without losing its old feel. The pickup and the boat still haul an old net through the Rogue at Huntley Park, but the data is now punched immediately into a hand-held computer. The data is then loaded into a mainframe at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's Gold Beach office in a matter of minutes instead of hours. That means run estimates for wild and hatchery halfpounders are available faster than it takes to hose the scales off waders. The benefit to anglers is twofold: First, the ODFW biologists in Gold Beach have more time now to do real biology like special studies aimed at identifying cutthroat and steelhead populations in Southwest Oregon. Second, state fish biologists can make updated halfpounder, adult steelhead, wild coho and fall chinook salmon counts available each week -- arming anglers with the freshest possible information for planning a weekend foray to the lower Rogue. Here's a sample: Through Sept. 8, there were an estimated 66,758 halfpounders, about half wild and half hatchery. That compares with 65,252 at that date last year, and 127,749 for the same time in 1997. Where such data once resided in stacked binders on state fish biologist Russ Stauff's shelf, it's now on an Excel spreadsheet at the end of every week. "The whole thing's getting high-tech now," Stauff says. That's good, considering how high-interest the bizarre and special halfpounder run is for the Rogue and those who fish it. Halfpounders are immature steelhead whose life cycle is unique to the Rogue and Klamath rivers. These steelhead travel out of the Rogue as smolts in April and May, then return to the river sometime between July and November during a false spawning. That differs from conventional steelhead, which stay a full year or two in the ocean before returning to fresh water as spawning adults. During this in-river period, they travel in large schools upstream into the Rogue Canyon, while others go as far as the Cole Rivers Fish Hatchery in Trail. They migrate back to the ocean each March and April, with about 20 percent returning to the river in midsummer as adult summer steelhead 16 to 19 inches long. Almost all Rogue Basin summer steelhead make halfpounder runs, while about a third of the winter steelhead join the trek. Vicious feeders whose name actually understates their weight, halfpounders tend to be 11 to 14 inches long in the Rogue. They are prized by anglers because the fish take flies greedily, fight well and are available in large numbers each fall and winter. They're the bread-and-butter fish for guides working the Rogue River Canyon each fall and are the backbone of a summer steelhead sport fishery that brings in an estimated $5 million a year to local economies, according to an ODFW survey. Fall anglers regularly track the halfpounder runs -- wondering if and when the fish reach the Rogue and how many of them do so. Their answers lie in the surveys of Huntley Park. Funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a crew of ODFW technicians -- and the occasional work-release inmate from the nearby Curry County Jail -- inventory fish are netted three days a week at Huntley Park, just upstream of tidewater on the lower Rogue. A 300-foot net is anchored to the river's edge by a thick stake, and it is then played out into the water by a 20-foot powerboat. The boat drags the net through the river toward shore, where it is transferred to the bumper of a pickup and dragged as far upstream as possible. The anchored part of the net is hauled up the gravel bar, capturing all the salmon and steelhead within it. This procedure is repeated 15 times each Monday, Wednesday and Friday from early August through November, beginning around 6 a.m. and usually running until 11 a.m. "If you're ever in the neighborhood, come check it out," Stauff says. "It's quite a show." But this show also has substance. The captured fish are identified and counted, checked for net or predator marks and for fin clips denoting wild and hatchery stocks. Stream flows are also factored in. In high flows, a lower percentage of the fish are caught than in lower flows. Taken all together, the ODFW can produce an estimate of wild and hatchery halfpounders. (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at: [email protected] ) Outdoor Journal main page Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA