Olcott Pen Project - Pen Put In

[Tim Bromund]

OLCOTT PEN PUT-IN SATURDAY APRIL 19th AT 8:00 AM AT THE NEWFANE TOWN MARINA IN OLCOTT

Mark your calendar for another fun Saturday putting the salmon and steelhead pens together and in the water. (hopefully brought to you snow free this year)

Due to drought and other conditions, the Chinook salmon egg harvest fell way short at the Salmon River Hatchery last fall. The DEC, LOTSA, Niagara County sportsmen, Charter Captains, Slippery Sinker and the town of Newfane along with their Fisherman's Park staff worked to help out with an emergency egg collection at eighteen mile creek. This effort showed the viability of emergency egg collection at eighteen mile and thus eighteen mile was designated a "back-up brood stock stream" by the DEC. This designation helped us to receive a larger percentage of our normal Chinook stocking than most stocking sites in this year of reduced stocking.

This year we will be raising 67,100 Chinook and our usual 3,500 steelhead. This is an increase of 17,100 Chinook in our pens.

With this increase we will need all four of our pens adding 25% to our work load. So we need all the help we can get for Saturdays crew.

Please come to help and bring a friend or two. All who have helped in the past know we have a good time and it is a great chance to meet some new friends from the community.

Don't forget to bring your wire cutters for snipping tie wraps.

We think we have found a place on the water for our after-work "pizza party" when we are done.

Look forward to seeing you there on the 19th and thanks for the support.

[Tim Bromund]

Just a reminder the pens are going in Saturday..

Also.....

We just got word from the DEC that our 67100 Chinooks and 3500 steelhead will be delivered at 1:00 on Thursday April 24.

Once they are in the pens, the babies need to be fed 5 times a day, every day until they are released. They need to be fed at 7:00 am, 10:00 am, 1:00 pm, 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm.

If anyone is interested in signing up to feed the little guys (and it's a great thing to bring kids to, they have a blast) you can do it online here:

http://www.lotsa.org/olcottpenrearing%2008.htm

Check the calendar to see what times are open, Fill out the form and when you I'll get an e-mail with the infor and I'll update the calendar. I update it every night so the marina knows who is supposed to be there. We get awesome support from the Newfane Marina folks, if there is an unfilled time slot the marina personnel feed the fish. If the designated feeder is not there within 15 minutes of the appointed feeding time, the marina people will feed the fish, so if you sign up, please be prompt. You have to go to the marina office to get the bags of fish food and the clipboards for each pen, on the clipboards, you record the water temp (off the digital thermometer there at the pens) any floaters fish activity and that sort of thing.

There will be 2 pens on each dock. At each pen take the bag of food, and distribute approx half the bag throughout the pen, go to the next one and do the same, then go back and distribute the other half bags, this is to give the fish time to eat the food before it settles down out of the pen. You just toss the pellets (they'll go right through the pen netting)

The steelhead are particularly fun to feed, they are MUCH bigger than the baby kings and a LOT more aggressive. it's like a school of pirhana when you toss the food in the pen.

Thanks

Tim