[wetline dave]

Over the years I have seen some smaller freshwater eels, say maybe 3 or 4 inches in length. Today laying up on the bank there was an eel that was 18 inches plus and close to 2 inches in diameter.

Questions- How big do they get? What do they eat? How prolific are they?

Looking in its mouth gives one second thoughts about wet wading!!

Dave

 

[Batt B]

An eel huh? You sure it wasn't a Pacific lamprey?

http://web.pdx.edu/~virginia/lamprey/pacific_lamprey.htm

 

[Guest]

What color? hmmm rabbit strips flies...

 

[wetline dave]

Matt,

Yep looked quite abit like the lamprey. I thought lampreys are eels.

Golfman,

It was a kind of greyish brown.. they are a protected species in fresh water.


Dave

 

[Batt B]

Yep looked quite abit like the lamprey. I thought lampreys are eels.

Well before your eyes glaze over I'll say that true eels are Actinopterygians that, along with most other modern-day fish, are derived from ancestors which diverged from lamprey a long long time ago. Probably around the time OMJ was learning how to extend his middle digit.

http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Phylogeny_of_Fish.htm

 

[wetline dave]

Matt,

Both links pretty interesting!

So there is A.D., B.C. and now B.OMJ! That must be about as old as the last ice age!

Dave

 

[wadin' boot]

.... Probably around the time OMJ was learning how to extend his middle digit

Probably not long after OMJ realized he could release his opposable thumbs from cylindrical objects, like a can of beer, a flyrod or his Johnson...

Seen them also on the Cedar, probably why a black streamer works so well there...

 

[Dr. Magill]

TOOO f_ing shay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[fodf]

Pacific lamprey..uber ancient and cool critter. Older than sturgeon and much revered by the native americans..even more so than salmon. Huge $$ being spent in the Columbia R. system to save their slimy asses..the dams are being retrofitted to accomodate their passage upstream. Very little is known about them..spawn in river tributaries, young spend 5-7 years in fresh water then migrate to ocean. Spend 1-3 years outside as a parasite on fish and mammals, return to fresh water for a year or so and then spawn. Columbia R. numbers have crashed..some would think because of the dams. But the coastal river populations are also in the tank so something else is affecting populations..no one seems to know why. No commercial value, yet a cultural value to the tribes may save this native northwest resource.

 

[wetline dave]

That is an interesting life cycle. So I could assume the lamprey laying up on the bank was most likely a post spawn adult and washed up during high water flows.

So the next question- are they live spawners like sharks or do they drop eggs?

Dave

 

[fodf]

Dave, good Q. Redds are dug and I'd assume that they spawn like other anadromous fishes. But I seem to to have seen pics of F/M intertwined to procreate..may have been something else altogether. Their redds are small but can be confused with steelhead redds in that I believe they spawn in the same timing window.

 

[wetline dave]

Keeping in mind their life cycle and the decline of lampreys it would seem that the huge decline in wild salmon and steelhead in our rivers has to be at least in part be a contributing factor.

There was a time when fresh runs of either salmon or steelhead were virtually coming into the rivers nearly every month of the year. Netting schedules have pretty much wiped out the front end of the runs for both steelhead and salmon. Any more the runs of wild fish are pretty much in relatively small windows. It would seem that this in itself would deprive the lamprey from a constant supple of food. If so then juvenile mortality would be high and the young lampreys would move out into the salt before they were ready and in turn increase juvenile mortality in the estuaries.

Wild fish would be key in that they tend to linger and spend more time in the river. Hatchery fish are in a race to get to the hatchery and don't tend to stick around.

Dave

 

[fodf]

A note to your post..pacifics are not known to feed once they hit fresh water. Their feeding is only known to occur in the salt. The juveniles are strictly filter feeders while in the fresh water. Up to about age 5 they are blind and settle in the soft substrate feeding on detritus, algae, and the like. Once they "smoltify" they develop eyes and head for the salt. They don't actively become predatory untill they hit salt, and can grow from about 6" to 2'+ in a span of a year or 2. Then back to fresh water where they shut down the feed bag and are in spawning mode, which can take up to a year. Like I said, they are truly amazing critters.

 

[Go Fish]

Is this like Termors...you know, with Kevin Bacon?

 

[Bob Jones]

We used to own a home on Johnson Creek in Milwaukie, Or. Every Spring the 6" to 9" eels would come slowly down to the Willamete on their way to the sea. People would often pollute the stream and we would see dead fish but usually the eels lived through it. i worked with a guy whose family had the rights to a piece of land on the St. Laurance Seaway in Canada. with this they also had rights to the fishery for the eels. They have a very definite economic value there. People who tried to poach or steel from them were sent to jail. He received a check every year for his portion of the proceeds. The native s also have the rights to the eels going over Oregon City Falls on the Willamette River and all others trying to gather eels would be charged with trespassing I think. The eels go up the falls or fish ladders at Bonneville by wiggling up over each other and useing that suction they used to eat to suck onto the cement or rocks and then doing it again over and over untill they reach the flowing water at the top. Years ago they were trying to exterminate the eels in the Great Lakes. I'm not sure what happened with that.

 

[Jonathan Stumpf]

Here's a good article that ran recently in the News Tribune...cool and rare find for sure.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/05/08/1179423/too-ugly-to-save-parasitic-pacific.html

 

[wetline dave]

Thanks for all the good and informative responses!!

The more we know about all the organisms that inhabit an eco system and their function in the grand scheme of things the better off we are. Every life cycle is intertwined and plays a role in all species survival.

Dave

 

[Jim Wallace]

I found one last summer stranded on a gravel bar, just below the head of tidewater in a Willapa Bay trib. Must have gotten stranded as the tide fell. I put it back in the creek, and thought it might survive. I checked on it later when I returned from wading upstream, but it didn't look like it was going to make it. I posted a pic of it. It was about 7" long, and olive-over-yellowish, with a grayish-purple head and rosy cheeks!
A local angler from Pacific County told me there were a lot of 'em in the local streams.