Tony Buzolich
04-20-2011, 05:22 PM
About once a month I take my wife to our favorite Chinese restaurant in Oroville's old town called Tong Fong Low. There's another one in Chico too. I'd often stop in there for lunch when fishing salmon or steelhead at the Tower next to the civic center. They never seemed to mind if I came in with my wet waders on either. Great food!
On the way there today we got behind a Fish & Game tanker truck returning to the hatchery. Hmmmm? I wonder where and what they're dumping(planting)? After lunch, we drove over to the hatchery and talked with a nice lady in the office whole filled in all the details.
Right now they are taking salmon smolt all the way to the bay. They transfer them to a floating net barge at the Conoco/Phillips refinery and shuttle them farther out into the bay where they are released. She says, "Needless to say the birds go crazy around the nets and this in turn attracts all kinds of boats". She didn't say it but she actually seemed sorry for the striped bass that are getting pounded so hard out there. She continued on about the salmon saying this was the most successful means of getting the salmon to the ocean and resulted in the highest percentage of return.
The tanker trucks we see earlier in the year dumping smolt in the rivers are steelhead.
It's nice to know that there still are some programs in place to keep things going at the various hatcheries, meager as they may be.
TONY
On the way there today we got behind a Fish & Game tanker truck returning to the hatchery. Hmmmm? I wonder where and what they're dumping(planting)? After lunch, we drove over to the hatchery and talked with a nice lady in the office whole filled in all the details.
Right now they are taking salmon smolt all the way to the bay. They transfer them to a floating net barge at the Conoco/Phillips refinery and shuttle them farther out into the bay where they are released. She says, "Needless to say the birds go crazy around the nets and this in turn attracts all kinds of boats". She didn't say it but she actually seemed sorry for the striped bass that are getting pounded so hard out there. She continued on about the salmon saying this was the most successful means of getting the salmon to the ocean and resulted in the highest percentage of return.
The tanker trucks we see earlier in the year dumping smolt in the rivers are steelhead.
It's nice to know that there still are some programs in place to keep things going at the various hatcheries, meager as they may be.
TONY