The old strain of Cutthroats in Pyramid Lake are now running up the Truckee river?

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

I was recently chatting with past Kiene's employee Brett Humphies and one of the subject was the fact

that this old strain of Cutthroat trout reintroduced into Pyramid Lake in Nevada is running up the Truckee river

in the winter to spawn.


Wow......this is really exciting news.


What have you heard?

[tcorfey]

Latest report I saw was from 2019
A subset of that report was:

"The amount of trout that have been migrating from Pyramid Lake up the Truckee River have also increased, going from a few dozen in 2013 to a record set this year (2019) of 775 migrating fish. If next year is a good water year, Heki said she expects to see more than 1,000 migrating Pilot Peak Lahontan Cutthroat Trout and possibly up to 2,000 of the fish.

As of now, one of the major obstacles in keeping the fish from their historic migration route from Pyramid up the Truckee River and its tributaries and toward Lake Tahoe is the Derby Dam, located roughly 20 miles east of Reno.

Ground is set to break on the Derby Dam Fish Screen Project next Wednesday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and will likely be completed the fall of 2020, allowing the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout to begin migrating farther upstream to the California-Nevada border. There are several other structures that are fish barriers, according to Heki, between the border and the Lake Tahoe dam."

Full article:
https://www.sierrasun.com/news/environment/lahontan-cutthroat-trout-swims-back-from-extinction-population-in-the-hundreds-of-thousands/

[TahoeJoe]

The fish screen is complete and opened last year. It's a very unique take on a fish ladder and has some cool civil engineering. Once the fish decide to migrate to spawn they should be able to get past the Derby Dam barrier.

Would we call the Pilot Peak strain potamodromous?

[Lucas Dement]

Oh no I dont need another migratory fish to get skunked on :rolleyes:

[JayDubP]

In addition to the remarkable fish screen ( ladder) at Derby, every other dam on the Truckee has a rock weir in the middle of the river so that fish can pass. If a cuttie wanted to, it could travel from Pyramid to Lake Tahoe.


Can you imagine standing in a couple of feet of water and one of the big monsters shoots past you?

Jim