collateral damage Justin. here's f&g shocking this past monday from the village down to campground #1. initial reports were 10:1 whitefish to trout. i wont give any other info they told me cuz it would be somewhat inaccurate with my mind, but hopefully the final trout population report will be ready for the november tu meeting. however dont hold your collective breaths since this stuff takes time.

Ed you should volunteer to help them next time. You might get a charge out of it.............specially if you have a leak in your waders.

watta bud! lookin' out for me...thanks bro.

Thanks for the explanation guys. I knew it had to be something.

Ed, the ratio of the dead fish was about 10:1 Whitefish to Trout for me as well.

If f&G was shocking then that is exactly what caused this, guarenteed. Same thing happened on the Teton river this fall with dead whities everywhere. F&G told me that the whities do not tolerate shocking as well as trout do, and it obviously showed.

shocking really bugs the insects too...

Maybe they would figure out to turn the voltage down a notch. Killing that many fish is not f&g goal, I don't believe, but why are they killing so many whities? Ed, this is an issue you should be most concerned about. Does the f&g not believe that salvaging all the whities is worth while, or are they just trying to add more nutrients into the river system?

ha! just thought about you this morning Pierre and wondered where youve been!

shocking is a damned if you do..damned if you dont gig. it's crossed my mind in the past that turning the juice down might save more untrout but then the lower voltage may not be effective on trout. i dont know. only shocking study ive read was on the effect on insects. speculating on the most effective-less lethal shocking, im sure biologists have studied this in detail..but i havent pursued reading up on it.

with the shocking ive witnessed over the years, plus participating, its almost impossible to salvage every fish and get em back to health whether whitefish or trout.

back in the late 80s, early 90s when f&g was doing heavy shocking of the ranch waters on the henrys fork..i pointed out to them that their research results would be flawed cuz of all the fish they left stuck upside down in the weeds...and there were piles of em...more than what floated to the top. f&G just floated downstream and picked off what easily came to the surface.

the crew i witnessed last monday on the sfb also had nets stretched out across the stream in addition to the hand nets so their capture methodology and sampling data was far superior to the hf example above. the section i watched em shock blew me away...sardine city. unbelievable the number of fish they netted. soooo many, they coulda fed my neighborhood thru new years.

im not concerned about the health of the whitefish population of the sfb compared to the fork Pierre..nor should f&g be. its healthy. real Real REAL healthy. it is a premier whitefish system, just like henrys fork used to be before '92. however, the sfb has one thing in common with the fork with respect to trout. the radical water drawdowns that strand the babies.

ive seen the devastation of this practice on trout on the fork and i know you have too. no doubt in my mind that this kills more fish than shocking...not even close. radical drawdowns affect the entire river. shocking affects just a small fraction of the stream.

seems to me that no matter what method used to capture fish, there is gonna be some beasts that just are not going to make it for one reason or another. but the numbers lost compared to the overall population is small, and i do believe that the researchers try to keep that number down and also try to get the percentage of loss..lower...

damn..i havent written anything this long since the last time i wrote something this long. hope it made some modicum amount of sense.

Very interesting Ed. Little long, but quite informative. There are many issues with water management, how about when they clsoe headgates to irrigation ditches. Have seen many dead fish in these ditches. Not much they can do to prevent fish from going through the headgates other then put screens in. But they usually don't because they clog up with debris quickly.

Once captured and in the bucket, the fish consume the dissolved oxygen pretty quickly. The whitefish are more sensitive than the trout to this...though I'm not sure whether whitefish were being captured during this particular survey on the SFB. If so, that may have contributed to some of the mortality too.

I've heard the term "stiffies" applied to whitefish because they stiffen up in the electrical current.

In a medium-large irrigation canal that I help to regulate during the season...once we shut the water down in the fall...we typically put in 30-40 man-hours to do a fish and lamprey juvenile (ammocoetes) rescue.
This is on a 200 yard stretch of canal coming off the Wenatchee River in WA. We typically rescue 150-400 salmonid juveniles, similar number of lamprey, and many whitefish and suckers.
WDFW has expectations that we will do this, and sends us a reminder each fall. They typically do come during or after the rescue effort to assess the job we have done.
I'd be surprised if similar expectations were not in place in Idaho for irrigators to live up to.

I would seriously doubt that there are any such requirements by IDFG for irrigators to salvage fish in diversion canals across Idaho. Has anyone heard of this in ID? We have some pretty large diversions around, and I'm almost certain that there is no salvage effort whatsoever.

On the other hand, it seems like the cost of salvage year after year would be more expensive than just screening the diversion... or maybe not? Why not just screen the canal instead of salvaging fish?

i didnt want to get into this can of worms which is why i didnt respond to koffman's screening comment, cuz my blood pressure gets up and so high, i almost become a human fountain. but now....here we go..

first, kudos to ya c1eddy and your fish and game. we have nothing like that in this state. idfg is so lacking in this area, but in their defense, the politics involved is incomprehensible sometimes, not to mention the lack of funding..even in good economic times.

then when you get directors like the buffoon named jerry connelly, or the insipid idiot whose name i forget, but he was videotaped mooning someone offa boat, it's paralysis to get anything done. when this guy was appointed director i threw up cuz i 'worked' with him when he was with the feds. i think his first name was steve, but im not sure. anyway he was another certified hymenhead. both pathetic carbon units.

decades ago, a f&g biologist told me that when initially constructed, a fish screen was supposed to have been installed at the new york canal. yep waaaay back when. never happened. still hasnt. looks like it aint gonna either. im willing to bet and give 1 to 10 odds that more fish are lost in canal shutdowns in this state, than thru the license paying catch and keep types.

again, in defense of idfg, the biologists know whats needed to 'protect and enhance' our fisheries. problem is the politics involved is something else, not to mention being damned if you do-damned if you dont..with the public and legislature.

local clubs around the state have been able to do more for fisheries than the govt entity, cuz they dont wear uniforms. does that tell you anything??

here is a sickening textbook example of what im talking about with the politics that f&g and others have to put up with. censorship or what huh?!! thank you butch otter. you are DISGUSTING.

http://www.windaction.org/news/17263

now you understand why i explode like mount saint helens having its period???