Salmon River Egg Take

[King Davy]

Was at the hatchery yesterday during a salmon egg take session. Great group of DEC folks probably a dozen working the different stations. Doing some math of how deep the race ways are with salmon stuffed from surface to bottom, I’d guess there are 20k salmon in the hatchery at the moment.

 

Tom the hatchery manager is the egg stripper of the fish. He can assess right away weather eggs are going to be good enough to milt for spawn.

 

Honestly I never saw them spawn a single small fish. Easily a hatchey full of mature fish well over 20 pounds.

 

You can’t fit another salmon in beaver dam brook. As far as you can see. The updates to the hatchery were really nice and gives visitors up close visuals to the raceway and brook.

 

Tech’s are spawning and aging the fish by taking scale samples. I’ve seen reports on the results in the past be looking for them. But looking at the size of the fish they were working with all looking to be well over 30 inches I doubt many could be two year olds. But that data should be available later on.

 

In the brook I saw a few fish up close that would go over 40 inches. So there was some tanks out there.

 

Fished the lower river after,  just thousands of salmon spawning everywhere. Few Cohos. So the good news what ever the number DEC is taking for eggs, they will no doubt get them.

 

 

 

Edited October 13, 2022 by King Davy

[troutman10]

Is the hatchery open to visitors since they did the improvements? I've been wanting to bring the kids for a visit. 

[Gill-T]

Awesome news!  Thanks for reporting out!  

[King Davy]

Troutman10, yes the hatchery is now open to the public again. They opened up last week. I believe the King egg take is finished. They were beginning to sort the Cohos from the kings to begin that egg take.

 

They constructed new decking from the hatchery to Beaver dam Brook, fixed the crumbling raceway walls, new railings and easy  view to get close to the fish.