Although we had good weather, we wondered if we should have brought snowmobiles. Luckily we made out to Camp Sherman and Lake Creek just fine with the pickup trucks, although some teams had to trudge a ways through wet snow to the release sites.

This project is an extraordinary collaboration. There were about 40 of us working on this release last Monday and Tuesday-from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and PGE. We also had a few volunteers from the U.S. Forest Service, Oregon Department of Transportation, and the Deschutes Basin Land Trust. Even though we were knee-deep in ice cold water, we're all pretty excited about seeing fish in the river again.

Getting the Fish to the Site
Transporting the fish was a bit tricky. The fry came from the Round Butte Hatchery and were about an inch and a half long. We had to carry a lot of them on foot over some distance, so we needed a method that was manageable.

We loaded the fry into doubled five gallon plastic bags (3000 fish each) with a gallon and a half of water, pressed out all the air and then inflated the bags with pure oxygen... As long as they have oxygen and are kept cool, the fish can survive quite well. We loaded the bags into large coolers over a layer of ice, three bags each, and drove them to the rendezvous site in the back of a pickup.

At Home in the Streams
At the rendezvous point we broke into the teams of about four, each team with two or three bags of fish. When a team reached their release site, they set the unopened bags in the stream to bring them to temperature. When ready, they opened two bags and then divided the fish into release buckets. Then we had to work quickly to get the salmon into the stream.

On Lake Creek, I accompanied the afternoon four-person release team. Two people headed upstream with their buckets. They used aquarium nets to dip out a few fry at a time and release them along the shoreline. We looked for quiet side waters with plenty of cover (weeds, sticks, debris) so the salmon could hide from predators. Wearing waders, we worked both sides of the stream.

The downstream half of the team had more territory they could cover, so in addition to their buckets, they carried the third bag in a backpack. Once they finished releasing the salmon from the first bag, they opened the bag in the backpack and continued downstream until all the salmon were released.

A Successful Release
We distributed 14 bags each morning and 10 bags each afternoon during those two days. It was pretty cold work, but we are all really enthusiastic about getting fish back into the Metolius. And thanks to Jens Lovtang, we had a well-designed plan. Jens is a biologist with the Tribes and earned his Master's degree several years ago studying how Chinook salmon use the various habitats in the Metolius River basin. Based on his research, he developed a plan for this release so we were able to place the fish in the most ideal spots for them to thrive.

A Whole Region Working Together
On the way back from the release on Tuesday, I took a shortcut and came across some folks installing an irrigation pipe for the Three Sisters Irrigation District. Farmers and ranchers here are starting to use pipes instead of open canals for irrigation so that the extra water goes back into Whychus Creek to provide better habitat for the fish. Many of these guys volunteered with the steelhead release last May.

The whole region is gearing up to support the return of the fish-and have been for years. The Deschutes Land Trust has spent millions of dollars to purchase land around Lake Creek to keep it protected. Farmers and ranchers are changing their irrigation methods to support fish habitat. What's really cool is how everyone has come together to make this happen-the Tribes, PGE, state and national agencies, farmers, ranchers and fishermen. Everyone is working together toward the same goal.

Don Ratliff

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