This year marks the 17th season of Kokanee Salmon Fry Trapping by the Three Rivers Chapter of Trout Unlimited. Based in Issaquah Washington, members and volunteers from the community donate their evenings to count this little native fish.
TU’s trapping effort is led by chapter members Wayne Lamm, Kristin Wyatt and Jeffery Jensen who recruited and coordinated volunteers to cover three-hour shifts starting just before dusk on three streams for four nights a week over two and a half months. In total, these dedicated volunteers contributed over 1,100 hours to count these beloved fish.
The traps are secured to the beds of our primary kokanee spawning streams and are lowered into the water during surveys. The traps sieve the flowing water and collect any fish that enter without harm. After an hour, the traps are raised and the fish collected are identified, counted, and released. Volunteers commonly see kokanee and coho salmon fry, cutthroat, sculpin, lamprey and once a year, the spawning run of peamouth chub. The now well-worn traps’ construction was originally funded through the Embrace a Stream Grant, helping make this work possible.
Monitoring matters
This data is used to evaluate the spawning success of ‘late” run kokanee salmon, which are a struggling native salmon in the basin. Once seen in the tens of thousands, we estimate that the 2023-24 kokanee spawning run had only 279 individuals. Kokanee Salmon are a keystone species in our system and are an important cultural resource in the basin. Counting the fry gives us insight to the survival of the eggs seeded into the stream and is a metric to evaluate the effectiveness of the recovery effort.
Many thanks to the Three Rivers Chapter of TU and the community members who have graciously supported this effort over the last 17 years. The data collected is referred to by fisheries managers as a “Gold Mine” for insight on this beloved little red fish.
If you would like to learn more about the Lake Sammamish Kokanee Recovery Effort, the Three Rivers Chapter’s kokanee fry counting program or the other amazing work TU is leading in the Seattle Metro Area check out our websites: lakesammamishkokanee.com, or lakesammamishrefuge.org.
You can also reach out to our program manager, David Kyle – dkyle@tu.org