Dolly Varden?

[alpinetrout]

jesus what a mess of information. so are arctic charr like a mythical creature?! if arctic coasts of canada and alaska are dolly's then where exactly are the actual arctic char?

They are there, it's just been suggested that perhaps they're not the dominant char species.

[ak_powder_monkey]

Arctic Charr and Dolly Varden are very closely related, they are actually pretty easy to tell apart though. AC have a much more deeply forked tail, bigger spots and look more yellow/olive when they spawn.

[fifafu]

So do some or most of the Dolly Varden migrate to salt water?

Mike

[Daryle Holmstrom]

Dollys or bulls they still tastes good in the skagit

[Itchy Dog]

I'm not sure what's in the air, but it's almost eerie how bull trouts are a hot topic of discussion lately.

http://ospreysteelheadnews.blogspot....-to-upper.html

[gigharborflyfisher]

I would be extremely interested in seeing any other photos of these fish if you have them. I am planning on a trip over to Maine for bluebacks in the next couple of years here. I am quite into native trout stuff and if you would like to talk some about native trout, shoot me a pm or an email.

[Paflyrod]

Hi native.. I atually had the photos sent to Maine Fish and Wildlife for positive ID. They are bluebacks. Please see the forked tail photo. I will send you a privite message.

[Paul Huffman]

When I worked for the Forest Service in Petersburg, AK, in the late 70's, Dollies were as common as dirt. They'd lay under the crab processing plant stacked like cord wood, waiting for scraps to be flushed off the processing floor. I caught one off the beach the first day I was in town. I was a newly minted graduate of the College of Fisheries, but I had not idea what it was. In the salt, they were pretty much silver and featureless. I guessed it was a sockeye, because I couldn't see any spots. I remember the locals were snickering at me as I carried my prize up the street back home. Dollies are poor table fare, especially you have fresh coho, kings, steelhead, or sockeye. Brook trout are tasty, but Dollies are pale and pasty. They were absolutely disdained by the locals, who would commonly just knock them over the head and throw them back. That summer I found them in rivers up to 3000 ft. elevation, in the bays and estuaries when I was fishing for silvers, and in the salty outer waters.

I caught quite a few arctic charr when I was working on the North Slope. Some were caught in sampling gear, others by flipping a spoon off the beach into the brackish water of Prudhoe Bay. They seemed hungry and viscous by the way they would slam a spoon. I keep some in a holding tank with a mix of whitefish species, and grayling, but they kept eating the other fish. They'd try to swallow anything their size or smaller.

[kamishak steve]

I'm pretty surprised to hear you say dollies don't taste very good - they do... In the rivers I guide along western Cook Inlet I've sampled some (they're really numerous), and they taste excellent.

[ak_powder_monkey]

When I worked for the Forest Service in Petersburg, AK, in the late 70's, Dollies were as common as dirt. They'd lay under the crab processing plant stacked like cord wood, waiting for scraps to be flushed off the processing floor. I caught one off the beach the first day I was in town. I was a newly minted graduate of the College of Fisheries, but I had not idea what it was. In the salt, they were pretty much silver and featureless. I guessed it was a sockeye, because I couldn't see any spots. I remember the locals were snickering at me as I carried my prize up the street back home. Dollies are poor table fare, especially you have fresh coho, kings, steelhead, or sockeye. Brook trout are tasty, but Dollies are pale and pasty. They were absolutely disdained by the locals, who would commonly just knock them over the head and throw them back. That summer I found them in rivers up to 3000 ft. elevation, in the bays and estuaries when I was fishing for silvers, and in the salty outer waters.

I caught quite a few arctic charr when I was working on the North Slope. Some were caught in sampling gear, others by flipping a spoon off the beach into the brackish water of Prudhoe Bay. They seemed hungry and viscous by the way they would slam a spoon. I keep some in a holding tank with a mix of whitefish species, and grayling, but they kept eating the other fish. They'd try to swallow anything their size or smaller.

The Wrangel narrows might be the best dolly fishing in the world!

Also apparently north slope AC are actually dollies... go figure

[hap]

Spent a whole day with Fred DeCicco, a friend and the ADF&G char guru, now retired, in October going through his char notes and being amazed... I took many pages of notes and got quite a bit of electronic stuff from him. It is mind-boggling. A lady with USFWS in the Anchorage office is continuing a lot of his work and is stepping well off into genetics. Her work may or may not be dramatic as they seem to think they have a fair handle on it now.

A few awe-inspiring facts:
Two dollies tagged on the North Slope were caught just over 1,000 miles away, less than three months after tagging, in Russia.

Dollies have incredibly varied behaviour patterns to survive extreme conditions... in some populations the females go to salt and males stay in the natal streams waiting... Tiny males mate with enormous hens... Loser males that could not compete with normal males sometimes go out with the hens and come back as huge males, but only because they could not compete with the smaller males at an earlier age.

Dollies eat mostly fish because their home waters are geologically very new and lack insect biomass food sources. As a result the fish drag a tremendous amount of energy up out of the ocean to live on for for extended periods of time, losing incredible weight in the process. And then, in the starved condition will sometimes hang on to spawn. Tagging and recapture studies have shown anadromous fish staying out of salt for something like 20 months before returning and spawning in the middle.

Too many different life stratagies to list, but essentially dollies have tried them all.

In general dollies overwinter in lakes and seldom part of their natal stream and return to their natal stream to spawn. They do not seem to have any fidelity to the parent stream and may go to different lakes every winter.

Arctic char overwinter in streams and live in lakes, in general.

Dollies in general are broken into northern and southern races in AK, which Fred feels should be different species, too. And he tends to be a lumper rather than splitter. Fred thinks there is sound argument for a third species farther north. That is part of what he thinks will come from the USFWS work. Northern race are far longer-lived and get significantly larger than southern race dollies.

Got to run, but there is a lot more... Also, some wierd char species in Asia...
art

[hap]

The Wrangel narrows might be the best dolly fishing in the world!

Also apparently north slope AC are actually dollies... go figure

Wrangell Narrows would not be the northern race, so it may be the fastest or easiest, but not the biggest...

No, there are dollies and arctic char on the north slope.
art

[hap]

I'm pretty surprised to hear you say dollies don't taste very good - they do... In the rivers I guide along western Cook Inlet I've sampled some (they're really numerous), and they taste excellent.

Dollies are far better eating than rainbows, pinks and dogs, to my way of thinking, too.

I like to fillet big ones from the inside, leaving the back skin intact, but removing all but the pin bones. I leave head, tail and all fins on. Then I brine them and smoke like salmon. They are damn pretty and eat just fine...

[hap]

I think the DV/bull trout splitters are more amusing than scientific when referring to the species in WA waters. The damn fish don't take icthyology or read textbooks. You'd think species divergence was supposed to occur in some clean split between two watersheds or something. Same thing happens when trying to differentiate DV from Arctic char in SW Alaska. Apparent "overlap" and interbreeding and confusion should be the expected observation. Overlap, hell there ain't any overlap. They're the same fish, in the same area, just ask them instead of a species splitter.

Sg

No, lots of differences easily seen in the literature and the fish. Gene counts are different, which is the biggie.
art

[hap]

This is preposterous. Common ancestor for each, yes, but the similarity ends there. As one travels around the range of native char, species divergence or separation based on geographical distance is the most compelling explanation for the small differences observed between the "species." Seem more like sub-species in the way Bhenke identifies his numerous cutthroat sub-species. It's explained more by geography than by genetics.

Sg

Note my comment from Fred about dollies going 1,000 miles in no time to spawn... Geography as divisive force is a cop-out, the world is pretty small really.