Smelling The Flowers and Fish Spawning

Sometimes we get so busy doing other things we forget to stop and smell the flowers.

Reading the online news I noted that there is a real scorcher happening in the lower mainland and Vancouver Island. As I check my thermometer it is 24 C outside. That translates to what? 78 Fahrenheit? I'm old school so I have to do some math.

It was only a month ago I was shoveling a late snowfall and wondering if I could get the Van UP the driveway. We live at an altitude about the same as the peak on Grouse Mountain.

So I was thinking that if any of you at the coast were fed up with the heat try remembering what you went through last winter and spring.

I had heard about a spawning channel nearby that had been built by some of the locals and we decided to go look for it. The bride, Mack E, and me.

We found it near a local lodge. It is a man made creek about two hundred feet long filled with Rainbow trout. Mack was going nuts at the sight of all these fish. Water is pumped from the lake in May and June when the fish are supposed to spawn under a road, up a small hill and the Rainbows head up into the gravel to do their thing.

Now there is a very good reason for doing this. You see if the fish can't spawn the eggs rot inside them and this doesn't make for a very good meal. A bonus for doing this is the recirculating of the water adding a little extra oxygen. But the main thing that happens is that the trout have a chance to grow into Trophy sized fish. And believe me when I say these are some biiiiggg rainbows. Unlike our fast depleting salmon stock, trout return to the lake to grow larger. They don't die off afterwards.

The downside is that we apparently don't use these eggs. When spawning is over they turn off the water and clean out the creek bed.

With all the killing of our wild salmon stock, that Campbell and his business cohorts insist isn't happening, or isn't caused by whatever, it's real nice to know that some folks got together to try and improve the local stock of trout. In September we will take Mack again to see more fish spawning. This time it will be the Kokanee (land locked salmon) at the mouth of the creek emptying from our lake.

As I was writing this it occurred to me with all the cuts we know are coming (see below) I wonder if they are going to try and cut off what little funding we have for this little local creek? Stay tuned.