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St. George Creek Trout StudyA Brief Introduction:From 1992 to 1996 volunteers from the Spruce City Wildlife Association (SCWA) operated a fish fence on St. George Creek. The purpose was to enumerate spawning adult and migrating juvenile populations of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). The project was funded by the SCWA and the Habitat Conservation Fund. St. George Creek is an inlet to Nadsilnich (West) Lake, a recreational lake located 8.75 km south of Prince George's southwest city limits. The Spruce City Wildlife Association has participated in enhancing the creek since 1990, with the construction of a coarse fish weir, reverse gravel platforms and gabions for stream bank protection. Nadsilnich Lake is located within the Nechako River Dry Warm Southern Sub-Boreal Spruce biogeoclimactic zone. Annual precipitation averages 555 mm (n=26) with a range of 481 mm to 606 mm, while from May to September the total averages 262 mm (range 224 mm to 279mm). The mean annual temperature is 2.8 oC (n=8, range +2.3 oC to 3.4 oC). The temperature averages 11.5 oC (10.6 oC to 11.7 oC) during the May to September time period. Hutda Lake feeds the major tributary to St. George Creek. St. George's Creek drains a watershed area of 60 square kilometers to the west of the lake. The upper portion of the creek flows through a series of swamps whereas the lower portion increases in gradient and provides potentially good trout habitat. The run enumeration and determination of the timing of rainbow trout migrations in the creek will aid the SCWA and BC Environment in making future enhancement decisions regarding St. George Creek and Nadsilnich Lake's trout stocks. Basic Operation and Implementation of the Fish Fence Two box traps and associated fencing were installed upstream of the coarse fish weir where the fence was attached to the gabions below the upper bridge, as it was felt these would afford the fence maximum stability. On the same day a staff gauge was installed upstream of the fence and was thereafter used to measure the water level. The upstream and downstream traps were checked twice daily, at approximately 6:30 and 18:30. Later in the time frame, the traps were checked once daily at approximately 16:00. The move to once-daily checking was presumably due to the small number of fish moving through the traps. Each time the traps were checked, the water level in centimeters, and the air and water temperatures all to once decimal place were recorded. All trout in the traps were sampled for fork length, weight and direction of travel in the creek. Fish greater than 7.5 cm, traveling in both directions, were scale sampled, and the samples placed in numbered scale envelopes. Upstream-bound trout 25 cm or greater were anaesthetized with Alka Seltzer and tagged with either 4 digit orange or 3 digit red spaghetti tags. All other species in the traps were recorded and released in the appropriate direction. | ||
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