A mid summer dinner.

 

Brookies and Lake Trout reduction.

The Wyoming Game and Fish is going to poison South Paint Rock Creek in the Big Horns  and close it from July 29 through August 2 in order to remove brook trout in an effort to replace them with cutthroat trout.

It has stated:

CODY- In an ongoing effort to maintain a core conservation population of Yellowstone cutthroat trout on the west slope of the Bighorn Mountains, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department plans to remove brook trout from a section of South Paint Rock Creek later this month. 

In cooperation with the Bighorn National Forest and Bureau of Land Management, fisheries biologists plan to remove brook trout beginning July 30 by treating a 6-mile section of South Paint Rock Creek with rotenone, a chemical used in very small doses that is toxic to animals with gills. The treatment should be completed by August 2.  

South Paint Rock Creek on the west slope of the Bighorns is one of the few remaining Yellowstone cutthroat trout populations in the Bighorn Mountains. “Currently, Yellowstone cutthroat trout occupy 21 miles of habitat secured with a downstream natural barrier,” said Joe Skorupski, Cody region fisheries biologist. “The section of the creek treated will extend the core conservation population 6 miles.”  

On July 30, rotenone drip stations will treat the water for six hours within a 6-mile section of South Paint Rock Creek. From July 29 to Aug. 2, the treatment portion of the creek will be closed to entry.  “As an added safety precaution, we do not want anglers fishing in the area during the week of treatment,” Skorupski said. 

A deactivation chemical will be dispensed immediately upstream of the confluence of Paint Rock Creek for the entire time the rotenone is in the stream.

It's also discussing removing the creel limit on lake trout in Flaming Gorge in order to reduce their numbers, as they compete with Kokanee Salmon that are also in the lake. The lake is in Utah and Wyoming.

Kokanee and Lake Trout are both introduced fish.

Related threads:

Trojan Brookies on Game Creek.

Labels: Brook Trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), Char (Salvelinus), Cutthroat Trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii), fish, Oncorhynchus, Salmon, Salmonidae, Snake River, Wyoming Game and Fish Department

Trojan Brookies on Game Creek.

The Wyoming Game and Fish has released 3,600 "Trojan" male brook trout in Game Creed, a tributary of the Snake River, in an effort to conserve native cutthroat trout.

Trojan brookies have two Y-chromosomes and can only produce male offspring.

Brook trout, which many Wyomingites assume are a native fish, are not to the Western United States.  For the most part the introduced fish has no negative impact on the waterways in which the are not only in, but are abundant in, but there are exceptions, such as apparently this drainage.

Both fish are members of the Salmonidae family of fish, of which Salmon are prominent members, but cutthroat trout are part of the genus Oncorhynchus, which includes twelve species including Pacific Salmon.  Brook trout, however are chars.