Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project

By Dave Streig

Good early rains this fall created creek flows that opened the creeks to the ocean in mid November last year and the first Coho were found returning to Scotts Creek in the first week of December. This year we saw the best return of Coho Salmon in the last 20 years of hatchery operation; it was estimated that well over 300 Coho Salmon returned to Scotts Creek last winter. We observed and/or handled 109 females; 26 wild females taken to the hatchery for spawning, 45 hatchery origin females were left in the creek along with 38 more wild females that we saw in the lower reaches of Scotts Creek and left to spawn in the wild. We also saw 123 males; 36 of which were wild and collected for hatchery breeding purposes, 42 were of hatchery origin and left in the creek along with another 45 wild males to spawn naturally in the stream system.  

All of the adult Coho this year were much larger than our previous 20-year average of 6 pounds, with our largest male of 7 3/4 pounds taken in the winter of 1984. This year the average size was 9 1/2 pounds, with the smallest Coho, a female, of 8 1/4 pounds and the largest, a female, of 13 1/8th pounds. Ocean conditions have obviously improved in the last couple of years to produce these large fish and the improved survival rate. Based on the fish seen, we estimate that this year produced a 2.8% return rate of hatchery produced fish. This is almost 10 times higher than the normal rate of return for Coho Salmon of .25% to .5% rate over the last 20 years.

Although many fish got past us this year, as we only collected adults 2 to 3 days a week; I would to thank the 23 volunteers who devoted 2,323 man hours in December thru March helping collect our Brood fish. I would also like to give special thanks to Cal-Poly Swanton Pacific Ranch for providing access and assistance in the transport of collected fish with use of their 19" gage trains, originally donated by the late Al Smith, past owner and founder of Orchard Supply Hardware.

Steelhead adults also were much larger and more numerous this year, but since we were only spawning 3 Scotts Creek females this year, we collected one female and four males in January and another female and male were collected in February and March. Because so few fish were collected, we did not keep extensive data on steelhead. However, we did cooperate with Dr. Shawn Hayes of NMFS who collected and tagged adult steelhead in Scotts Creek with his assistants. Likewise, they have aided us in our adult fish collection, amidst their ongoing extraction and assembly of data on wild and hatchery fish interaction studies in Scotts Creek.

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