The Golden Rods and Reels are very active at the Goldstream Hatchery and the following is just a short portion of the December newsletter, if you want to view the whole newletter follow the link below and you can read about the work that has been done by volunteers over the year.
Escapement 2007
Once again, this fall has been a disaster for Chinook returns on the southern part of Vancouver Island. In spite of a release of a considerable amount of water into the Goldstream River starting in late September, only five Chinook were captured, all male. To make matters worse, the Nitinat hatchery also had a much less than normal return this year, and consequently are not able to provide us with any eggs. The rains have been quite irregular in November and early December, but Coho and Chum have returned and reasonable numbers have been captured, although far from a desirable total.
Shawnigan Creek had a fairly good return, and we have been able to augment our fish with some from that watershed. We should end up with totals of about 100,000 Coho eggs and 230,000 Chum eggs. The best news is that over 200 Coho have been counted returning to Millstream, so we hope that our rebuilding efforts are beginning to pay off.
