Not really worth it with the lack of spawning areas in the upper creek. Plus I think it would hurt the rainbow population. The salmon in lower Putah Creek show up in December to spawn during the rainbow spawn. I don't think there is enough room for both
Not really worth it with the lack of spawning areas in the upper creek. Plus I think it would hurt the rainbow population. The salmon in lower Putah Creek show up in December to spawn during the rainbow spawn. I don't think there is enough room for both
Agreed, a ladder would not help either species. However rainbows do spawn successfully just below the diversion dam and spawn long after the winter run Kings die off. Aside the fact salmon are spawning below Solano they are hatchery fish anyway and generally show up due to low flow in the Delta, meaning they don't carry much significance in my opinion. Especially on a creek as bassackwards as Putah. Enjoy the warm weather trout fishery and hope the salmon figure out to go elsewhere, for their own good.
Please, no! We have the perfect hybrid of eagle lake trout, mc cloud trout, and steelhead. If anything we should build a Hatchery and ship these trout out to other rivers. They are simply amazing.
Putah has unbelievably large and beautiful rainbows and a ladder on the Solano dam would not realistically increase the success of Putah salmon. Which you will notice only appear in abundance during drought years because Putah has high flow for agriculture and hatchery Kings tend to merely follow flow and not their origin.
California clips the adipose fin of 25% of hatchery salmon. Guess what percentage of Kings in Putah have clipped adipose fins...The concept of restoring a historic salmon run is naive and used to gain funding and pay for the rich and powerful of Winters to alter the creek to their liking. I won't say names but you all know what happened below Solano. Conveniently timed during a drought and when the state increased hatchery production, but fooling most into thinking it caused the appearance of the "wild" salmon that previously spawned in Putah.
The truth is Putah is a completely bassackwards creek that happens to support an amazing population of gorgeous and healthy/large rainbow trout. For example.
