Dolly Varden?

[Smalma]

Hap -
DeCicco has done great work and his findings are very interesting. His tagging studies of the overwintering fish (on the Wulik River?) and the fish's later movements are just "eye popping".

During the early part of the 1990s when Washington's WDFW wsa trying to make sense of the Dolly Varden/bull trout issues in western Washington he graciously shared his insights and findings. Ultimately while it was found that the anadromous char of western Washington were bull trout their behaviors had many similarities with DeCicco's Dollies. And yes the two fish genetically are very different species even though look and behave in a very similar fashion.

Regarding movement of Washington's char -
There has been several references to the amount of movement that our fish do all of which is correct. Just another example fish tagged in the Skagit has been "seen" in the Sound as far south as the Green river in Seattle. However there is also considereable evidence that as a group they exhibiting a great diversity in behavior (usually related to feeding and spawning) individuals often are quite true to a given behvaior. A couple of examples -

On the main Skagit it was found that adult fluvial fish (those fish doing rearing/feeding in the large pools of the mainstem) had a great fidelity to a home pool. Between spawnings (individual fish can spawn 5 or 6 or more times) the majority of the fish tagged in the winter/spring period and later recpatured in that same time of year were in the same pools as originally tagged.

Preston mentioned that fish tagged in the Snohomish that went to the WhiteChuck to spawn. Another fish tagged in March at the top of tide water on the Snohomish later made the trip to the Skagit basin to spawn and the following winter post spawn left the Skagit and returned to the very same pool on the Snohomish only to later in the year to repeat its spawning run to the Skagit.

Another fish tagged at the mouth of the Snohomish spend the entire spring in the same area moving very little and then in early summer it suddenly disappeared only to show up in the Skagit. That fish repeated that process for three consective years. BTW Hap mentioned how fast those fish could move. That fish when it left the Everett traveled along the shoreline of Port Susan, down the east shoreline of Camano Island, up the west side of Camano reaching the LaConner area in a day and 1/2 and a tide later was by Mt. Vernon.

There are many such examples from several tagging studies of Skagit fish; both floy (number plastic tags inserted below the dorsal fin) and radio tags. In short our native char regardless of what we call them are fascinating fish with diversity behaviors that are likely to provide fodder for biological studies for several generations of biologists. For the angler increased understanding of these critters not only make them more interesting that knowledge often leads to increase fishing success.

Tight lines
Curt

[Kent Lufkin]

That's fascinating stuff Curt - thanks for sharing. Why do you reckon DV/BT are so much less 'faithful' to returning to the natal waters to spawn than, say salmon or steelhead? Is is a survival strategy, do they simply have less-accurate internal navigation mechanisms, or . . . ?

K

[Smalma]

Kent -
Actually I think that our spawning native char are as faithful to their natal streams as salmon and steelhead. It is just that they have such diverse feeding behaviors, are long lived, and remain more or less local (not going to the open ocean) that we see the non-spawning fish in locations that we don't normal associate with thier natal stream.

Just one example - a radio tagged Skagit fish was detected during at the Ballard locks; later that summer it was detected entering the Stillaguamish. A few days later it left the Stillaguamish only to show up in the Skagit where it disappeared through the spawning season (spawned in the Skagit basin). If we just look at the Ballard observation or while it was in the the Stillaguamish or any other time during its "probing activity" we would have thought that it was straying fish and likely to have spawned in its non-natal basin but when its year-long behavior was looked on as whole it is clear that it was not a stray.

Because the bull trout pre- and post spawn behaviors are influenced by so many different factors in different years we seem them doing different things and since most folks never actually see the spawning fish it is only natural to assume that when are fewer fish in our fishing there must have been fewer spawners. Over the last couple decades I have been able to compare my post spawn fishing success on say the Sauk with that year's escapement. What was observed was that success (catch/hour) was more influenced by such things as forage (for example chum escapement), river conditions (floods -timing and size, temperature, visibility, etc), fishing pressure, etc. than the number of spawners. Often on similar spawning escapements dramatic differences were noted in posrt spawn angling success.

Tight lines
Curt

[Salmo_g]

Kent,

I think we're seeing that native char have the same high fidelity to spawning location as other species. The tagging data show that it's their foraging migrations that take them to other drainages.

Sg

[hap]

This past summer on Kodiak the average stream I fished had at least several orders of magnitude fewer dollies than years past, but the dollies present were likely all spawners and showed tremendous size. One in particular I caught was no more than about 25", which is just a good fish, not incredible... But this one was an absolute pig! And well over 20" in girth! I guessed it at close to 15#.

I suspect conditions were not good when the dollies wanted to start into the rivers so they went elsewhere for this year. I heard of other streams with far more dollies than usual just across the island.

It looks like a lot of built-in flexibility in adapting to variability. It also looks like a good idea to spread out the fish to prevent loss of an entire population during unusual conditions.
art

[ak_powder_monkey]

thats a big southern dolly! Holy crap!