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By Mark Freeman Mail Tribune November 15. 2014 12:01AM A different kind of fish feed Larry Butts prepares a string of salmon carcasses to be dumped into the Rogue River, where they will provide food for juvenile fish and other aquatic residents. Mail Tribune / Mark Freeman SHADY COVE — Larry Butts and a band of volunteers today will take the art of throwing spring chinook salmon back into the Rogue River and literally turn it into a fish feed. The group will be using driftboats to carry and toss out nearly 1,300 excess chinook carcasses into the upper 10 miles of the Rogue to add nutrients and food for everything from crayfish and small bugs to infant salmon and steelhead. It's the first time this so-called "stream enrichment program" used to feed the basin's tributaries has been expanded to the main-stem Rogue, and it needs a driftboat brigade to systematically tote and dump close to 16,000 pounds of dead salmon upstream of Shady Cove. "We have so many juvenile salmon and steelhead that spend so much time in the main-stem (Rogue) than in the tributaries, so it's good to put them there," says Butts, a Medford man from the Rogue Valley Chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association, which is spearheading the effort. Studies show Pacific Northwest and Canadian streams enhanced with excess carcasses had more rearing juvenile fish per mile than unseeded streams. Other studies also show that juvenile salmon and steelhead that fed on salmon carcasses grew 8 percent to 12 percent more as juveniles than non flesh-eating fish. "Bigger, faster, stronger. It's gotta help," Butts says. While appearing to be an artificial seeding program, it actually brings the Rogue more in line to the natural amount of marine nutrients carried inland to the upper Rogue by spawning salmon The placement of Lost Creek Dam cut off about one-third of the spring chinook's spawning habitat, and hatchery fish are raised and reared to make up for those losses. In the past, the carcasses from spawned-out hatchery fish that theoretically would have spawned upstream of the dam have been buried in landfills, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Now, those that did not die from disease are frozen in hatchery freezers for return to streams to provide important winter nutrients. The carcasses are also frozen long enough to kill the parasite that causes salmon poisoning in dogs, says Chuck Fustish, an ODFW fish biologist in Central Point who oversees the program. They are then thawed the week before stream placement, he says. The stream plantings are done by following a strict ODFW protocol that avoids causing water-quality impacts. They also avoid populated areas to reduce olfactory interference with streamside residents, he says. The plan is to seed the upper Rogue with 15,560 pounds of the excess fish today, then return next Saturday to add about 10,500 more pounds, hatchery Manager David Pease says. When seeding tributaries, volunteers drive creekside roads and toss carcasses into the waterways. That's not possible on the Rogue, so Butts and his fellow CCA volunteers had to devise an alternative. They used chords to string several spring chinook together, then suspended them from the front gunnels of driftboats. Volunteers today will adorn their boats with about 500 pounds of fish, dropping them as they float downstream and reload their carcass cargo at public and private boat ramps. The chords allow the carcasses to be distributed in a fashion that helps the boat to remain rowable. "I test-ran it with my boat, and it worked great," Butts says. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 541-776-4470 or [email protected]. Follow him at www.twitter.com/MTwriterFreeman.   http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20141115/NEWS/141119743 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->