Spawning time

[Tony Buzolich]

No, not now. This is just a question that I've had trouble answering.

Do all of the salmon in our rivers spawn at the same time?

By this I mean, do the springers we see now wait it out till fall to spawn? I realize that some fish come into the river system early and some come late but I've been told that there really is only one run and that they all spawn about the same time.

Any truth to this? The hatchery in Oroville is packed solid with fresh salmon that are not ready to spawn. The Dept. of Water Resource people have tagged several thousand of these already and put them back into the river to ripen up some more. The funny thing is they turn right around and come right back up the ladder because they have nowhere else to go.

Any thoughts out there guys?
TONY

[Darian]

Hi Tony,.... Not an expert but from everything I've read, there're distinctions made between the annual runs of Salmon regardless of when they spawn.

There probably isn't any genetic difference between springers, summer, fall and/or winter run fish (....all present in the Sacramento River, as I'm told). Not sure about now but at one time they were managed according to when they arrived in the system. For example, at least one of the runs in the Sacramento was classified as threatened at one point in time. Others were not.

My vote is that there is a difference between the runs and that they and their environmental needs should be managed accordingly. Not sure that there're multiple runs in the Feather, tho, even tho they seem to enter the river over a prolonged period.

[Darian]

I should add that it appears that the idea that all fish are of a single run regardless of when they enter a system, may arise out of the latest policies of EPA/NOAA, etc. It benefits agri-business/water users/suppliers to take this simplified approach. If, for example, all Salmon/Steelhead (whether hatchery or wild born) are seen as the same, it is easier/less costly to manage for fisheries folks....

Years ago, I was priviledged to sit in, quietly, on informal discussions between local federal/state fisheries biologists. All of these people were concerned with the state of the winter run Salmon in the Sacramento River. Those discussions recognized the differences in the timing of the runs.

The result was the change in classification mentioned in my other post. It was very enlightening to hear the strategies proposed to accomplish the objective....

[Jgoding]

Hi Tony,

From what I've read or been told, all the fish spawn at nearly the same time regardless if they were a springer or not. This doesn't seem right to me, as it doesn't seem like it's a good thing to enter the freshwater system so early and have to wait 4-5 months to spawn but at the same time it can also be advantageous in say a low water year where maybe in the fall there isn't a whole lot of water coming down springers would have an advantage since they're already at the spawning grounds.

I do think people classify the runs as different and I think even the genetics of the runs may differ slightly. As Darian says, some runs of the same fish are protected more than others based on the timing as well. I think the Sac closes the Salmon fishery down to 0 limit from I think Jan.-July to protect a spring run of kings (or maybe silvers). I remember catching a few back some years on the Sac while striper fishing in April or something, they were jacks, but the season was closed and they were part of an endangered spring run apparently.

[Darian]

Hmmmm,..... Jeff's post revived thoughts of an old question. If summer/fall run Salmon/Steelhead enter the river systems and hold 4-5 months before spawning, do they actively feed If they do continue to feed, that would explain their feeding activity/behavior while in the river. Also, it would have to mean that their roe/milt sacks were not fully grown upon entry.

[Covelo]

You have to think about the rivers without dams. These different runs would have been separated spatially as each run would encounter different water levels and would have migrated to different stretches of the river with the summer/fall runs being lowest in the system due to low flows and winter runs migrating the highest reaches with more water. This is not to suggest that there was not interbreeding, but generally spring and winter runs would have been holding and spawning much further up the rivers and would not have typically been close to the summer/fall run. Water temps in the upper rivers would have been lower and more suited for fish holding all summer. If spring run chinook are anything like summer-run steelhead on the Middle Fork Eel River then they are in conserve mode when holding and mainly survive due to the large fat reserves they bring with them. Probably why springers taste so good. They may feed some during this time, but typically there is not enough food around to support so many large fish.

Maybe someone else can provide info on when the winter run spawns as I am not sure if they hold in the upper river through the summer and spawn in the fall like the springers do.

[ycflyfisher]

You have to think about the rivers without dams. These different runs would have been separated spatially as each run would encounter different water levels and would have migrated to different stretches of the river with the summer/fall runs being lowest in the system due to low flows and winter runs migrating the highest reaches with more water. This is not to suggest that there was not interbreeding, but generally spring and winter runs would have been holding and spawning much further up the rivers and would not have typically been close to the summer/fall run. Water temps in the upper rivers would have been lower and more suited for fish holding all summer. If spring run chinook are anything like summer-run steelhead on the Middle Fork Eel River then they are in conserve mode when holding and mainly survive due to the large fat reserves they bring with them. Probably why springers taste so good. They may feed some during this time, but typically there is not enough food around to support so many large fish.

Maybe someone else can provide info on when the winter run spawns as I am not sure if they hold in the upper river through the summer and spawn in the fall like the springers do.

Agree with everything you stated. Your point about differential run timings not only leading to temporal but also spacial separation is key here IMO.

[ycflyfisher]

No, not now. This is just a question that I've had trouble answering.

Do all of the salmon in our rivers spawn at the same time?

By this I mean, do the springers we see now wait it out till fall to spawn? I realize that some fish come into the river system early and some come late but I've been told that there really is only one run and that they all spawn about the same time.

Any truth to this? The hatchery in Oroville is packed solid with fresh salmon that are not ready to spawn. The Dept. of Water Resource people have tagged several thousand of these already and put them back into the river to ripen up some more. The funny thing is they turn right around and come right back up the ladder because they have nowhere else to go.

Any thoughts out there guys?
TONY

Tony,

There is no distinction via ESU listings for a spring run vs seperated fall run of Chinooks for the Feather. It's all considered one run hence the DWR personel telling you they don't make a distinction between the two despite drastically differing arrival times. They refer to the early arriving fish as having "spring run characteristics" but don't officially recognize a unique spring run because the hatchery never really successfully implemented spawning protocols to keep each run well separated.

The fact is, spring run fish do have differing rates of sexual maturation and do to some degree spawn over a slightly different progression than do the fall run fish. No question there is some overlap between the two in regards to spawning windows. They do make an effort to tag those early arriving fish and from what I'm told, do attempt to spawn those fish together to preserve the early arrival time characteristic. If you look at the history of protocols at the Feather River facility, that wasn't always the case. The "spring run" characterisitic was inadvertently preserved to some degree at that facility by a 'first ready to drop, first spawned" situation.

There's not a lot of historical records on the Feather in regards to what was going on in that watershed prior to the dams. As Covelo pointed out, the originally existing spring run on the Feather was likely riding in of the tailend of the spring run off to push fairly far up into the Feather watershed, that later arriving fish simply could not get into under falling summer flows, finding thermal refugia where it existed. In most watersheds up and down the west coast, "spring run" fish in watersheds where hatchery practices were initially convoluted or ill defined, were inadvertently preserved through what amounts to little more than pure luck. Also the reason they dump the tagged fish back into the river is that mortality rates were too high during the years they attempted to contain the early arriving fish in the hatchery until they reached sexual maturation.

[Tony Buzolich]

This is really good stuff YC and Covelo.
TONY

[Covelo]

ycflyfisher wrote;

There is no distinction via ESU listings for a spring run vs seperated fall run of Chinooks for the Feather. It's all considered one run hence the DWR personel telling you they don't make a distinction between the two despite drastically differing arrival times.

That is surprising considering the bag limit regulations on the Feather River were changed a couple years ago because the hatchery was not receiving enough early run fish, suggesting that they do consider them to be different runs. Surprising also that even though the DFG felt it necessary to reduce the bag limit before July 15 because the run was being impacted, there has been a complete absence of law enforcement on the river this year with plenty of illegal activity taking place. Time to call somebody.