March 6-7th~
Chris went on a work trip up to Sawtooth hatchery near Stanley. With the crazy winter we had the drive up there was a little scary. Snow was about 15' high up near Banner Summit and the highway had been closed most of the winter from avalanches.
The work they were doing was putting PIT tags into young salmon so they could be tracked on their migration to the ocean that would start in April. They tagged 2,000 fish in about 5 hours!
The drive up to Stanley
The wall tent they used to stay warm during the tagging work
Micah and Brian getting things set up
Large hypodermic needles were used to insert the tags into the fish
The setup
In August Chris went to the SF Salmon fish trap to work up adult salmon that were returning to the fish trap. They handled some huge fish including this big male. Phil Branigan, Rebecca Rodgers and Ken Felty are in the first picture.
Chris also did some salmon redd surveys and came across a lot of fresh bear sign including the tracks in the mud below
A spawning salmon (upper left portion of the photo)
