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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend August 31, 2005 Scramble on to replenish trout stocking By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune TRAIL — A disease outbreak among nearly 400,000 rainbow trout at Cole Rivers Hatchery jeopardizes next year’s trout stocking plans for most of the Rogue Valley’s larger lakes and ponds. But Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists hope a combination of trout trades with other Oregon hatcheries and excess trout from as far away as Washington will reduce any blow the outbreak will have to anglers. "The chances of getting all of these are pretty slim, but chances are we can scatter some fish in the higher- priority water bodies," hatchery Manager Randy Robart says. "There are lots of contingency plans we can work our way through," Robart says. "We’re not ready to say it’s gloom and doom yet. But this could be significant." Infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus is a naturally occurring and sometimes deadly disease that attacks the kidneys of young trout and salmon. It passes easily in water and was detected among adult salmon and steelhead returning to the hatchery over the past year, but these trout are the first IHN-infected juvenile fish at Cole Rivers since 1991. Advertisement IHN is strictly a fish disease and it has no impact on humans, birds or other warm-blooded animals who ingest the fish or are exposed to the water, says Tony Amandi, the state’s senior fish-health specialist in Corvallis. The infected trout were earmarked for Lost Creek Lake, the upper Rogue near Prospect, Applegate Lake and most other lakes and ponds in Jackson, Josephine and Curry counties as well as portions of the Willamette Valley. Other waters planned for stocking with disease-free trout include Willow, Fish, Emigrant and Selmac lakes and Expo, Medco, Libby, Dutch Herman, Burma and Spaulding ponds. The IHN outbreak does not affect trout stocking in Hyatt and Howard Prairie lakes, which are stocked with fingerling rainbow raised at the Klamath River Hatchery. To ensure that infected hatchery trout do not spread the disease to native fish, ODFW policy is to stock IHN-infected fish only in so-called "hot" waters where the disease previously was found. Several lakes in northwest Oregon are known to house the virus, and ODFW policy would allow diseased trout to be stocked there, Robart says. About 50,000 of the 390,000 infected fish, which are 4 to 6 inches long, have died so far, Robart says. Currently about 100 dead fish are found daily among the eight concrete raceways where the rainbow trout now are held, he says. Robart says the surviving fish could be isolated at the hatchery and raised and traded for IHN-free trout. If so, a quarantine plan would have to be established to ensure the disease does not spread to the hatchery’s main product — steelhead, chinook and coho salmon, he says. "But if we have to euthanize them, we want to do it quickly," Robart says. The strain of IHN is the same as that detected in adult steelhead and chinook returning to the hatchery this year, Robart says. But that does not necessarily mean the trout were infected by the returning adults, he says. The source of the outbreak was unknown, Amandi says. Possible sources range from water supply and predators to infected hatchery tools, Amandi says. Another possibility is that the fish were contaminated by anglers carrying IHN-infected adult chinook through the hatchery after catching the salmon at the Hatchery Hole along the facility’s dike earlier this year. A least likely source is the hatchery’s water supply because young salmon and steelhead now in neighboring concrete ponds and sharing the same water source have not tested positive for IHN, Amandi says. "We probably will never figure it out," Amandi says. Robart says there are no plans to close the Hatchery Hole to angling, in part because effort there in the late summer and fall is light. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail Scramble on to replenish trout stocking ">[email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2005 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback www.bingo.com Home Security Systems Trunks, Footlocker dvd-r Distance Education Computer Security Ztech Media Hosting Sports Equipment Online Casino Student Loans tcg student loan consolidation Online Pharmacy Online Casino Reviews Myspace Home Equity Loans Windermere Van Vleet Rogue Valley Travel Discount Hotel Reservations Southern Oregon Loans Online Casino News Casino Gambling Sites Budget Website Templates Online Bingo Entertainment Guide Advertisement s