[STEELIE ADDICT]

OK, I have another kokanewe question for the experts out there. I looked at last year's stocking report, since this year's is not out yet, and there are quite a few lakes in King County that are listed as having kokanee plants. I also checked back a few years and these same lakes seem to get planted every year. I fish many of these lakes often, but I have never incidentally caught a koke. My question is, are these plants ending up as bass food or what is happening to them?

The lakes I am looking at are Wilderness, Sawyer, Langlois and Beaver. Sawyer and Wilderness look to have pretty substantial plants, but I never see kokes or hear of anyone catching them.

 

[madcapmag]

Most of the smaller lakes are stocked with smolt, that do end up being food for bass and trout and anything else. I've always been interested in Beaver though... it gets pretty deep.

 

[STEELIE ADDICT]

Langlois is very deep but I think it has a healthy bass population too. I fish Beaver a lot and have never seen a koke there.

 

[epidemic]

Some of these lakes like Beaver for example, have only been stocked for two years. If you know your koke/sockeye life span you know it's going to take probably 3 or 4 years for them to respawn. This means the ones that are left in there will probably be a catchable size soon. I may be wrong, I'm no expert, this is just my own observation.

 

[STEELIE ADDICT]

That is a good point and I thought the same myself. I looked into it more and found this from the plant report.

Trout Fry Plants
Nearly 18 million fry and fingerlings were stocked as 2-to-5 inch long trout into 581 lakes
and ponds. Kokanee were stocked in 2005 for the 2007 fishery, while trout were
stocked in 2006 for this year's catch. Fry are stocked in the spring and fall, where they
feed and grow on natural food until the following spring when they are large enough to
be harvested. The survival rate of fry varies depending on the lake. A number of
eastern Washington lakes are managed in such a way that fry survival is very good and
are the primary source of new trout available for harvest. Western Washington lowland
lakes depend primarily on catchable size trout plants because of relatively low fry
survival. Where fry are stocked, the ones that survive supplement the catchable trout
plants.

I am assuming that the plants listed were actually kokanee fry that were planted back in 2005 for the 2007 fishery. Maybe this is an incorrect assumption? I am not really sure. I am also not sure if there is a variance in survival rates between trout fry and kokanee fry.

 

[fishing bear]

All Kokanee are planted as fry because what they eat can not be man made. So they have to live on there natural food. I think if you look the wdfw web site tells it the plant was Kokanee or Trout of some kind.

 

[moss]

kokanee/sockeye can be raised in a hatchery setting to smolt (age 1+) size

 

[sparky]

Do you know what they feed them at the hatchery? I would have presumed freeze dried krill , or maybe shrimp pellets like I feed my tropical fish.

FishingBear, do they raise live brine shrimp or some other insect to feed them?

 

[fishing bear]

Here are some numbers wdfw web site for 2007.

Beaver 15.000
Langlois 10.000
Meridian 30.000
Sawyer 69.000
Wilderness 25.000

And over the pass Cle Elum 436.800
Kachess 502.103

And the same for 2006

Beaver 15.000
Langlois 12.000
Meridian 50.000
Sawyer 90.500
Wilderness 25.000

And over the pass Kachess 237.160
Keechelus 287.630

 

[STEELIE ADDICT]

No ideas from Kokanee Kid or Kokanee King?

Does anyone know the average survival rate of kokeanee fry?

 

[Keysrob]

I emailed WDFW a couple of years ago with a bunch of questions about kokanee. Their fish biologist for the region responded a couple weeks later with some good info.

Here's his response regarding the life cycle of kokanee:

In essence, kokanee are the resident form of sockeye salmon. Kokanee inhabit the open water areas (called the pelagic zone) of lakes and feed mostly on zooplankton. They prefer large deep lakes. In general, kokanee mature at four years of age and make their spawning run during the fall and winter. However, there are several kokanee populations that mature at age 3 (Lake Stevens may be that way as well). They spawn in small to medium size inlet streams. Kokanee, like salmon, die after they spawn. Once young kokanee lose their yolk sac they migrate into the lake and begin rearing. For more information on kokanee biology and ecology I'd recommend doing some Google searches on kokanee. You should be able to find a lot of information on this species.

 

[THE TRAPPER]

All Kokanee are planted as fry because what they eat can not be man made. So they have to live on there natural food.

Nothing more "natural" than Koke Food, I even have it for Dinner.
:lol:

wink:

Beats "Whitefish Food" anyday ! conf:

sick:

" TRAPPER"

 

[sparky]

Do they raise phytoplankton and zoo plankton as feed, or do they fetch it from a body of water?

Once larger, do they feed them newly hatched brine shrimp?

Oh Salmo, tell us what you know about hatchery Kokanee.

 

[epidemic]

I have an answer to all of these questions.

http://www.google.com

 

[Jake Dogfish]

Great topic. I am curious as to what they eat when they are smaller and what it looks like.

As for the the kokanee fry plants, does the state give out any previous plant information until the spring stocking plan? For example, we will not know which lakes were planted and exactly how much (two years ago) until this 08 spring trout stocking plan comes out. Right?

 

[Kokanee King]

nope no answer for me I have never really thought much about smolt survival till now And I fide it to be quite interesting I may have some input on koke growth rate and spawn cylcles later.

 

[fishing bear]

Jake Dogfish you can find that info. on the wdfw web site I posted some of the plants for 06 and 07 in this thread.

 

[Smalma]

Salmo g. may have more to add but here is some brief information on hatchery kokanee and their survival that I can add.

After kokanee hatch they are relatively easy to raise in the hatchery and will eat the commerical prepared trout food as long as it ground finely enough for them to eat it. When the kokanee first hatchery they are extremely tiny - it would take approximately 1,500 of them to weigh a single pound. There are 3 common strategies in rearing the fry prior to release.

The first is to feed the small fry for several weeks prior to release - they are usually about 1,000/# when those fish are released and hopefully the release will be timed so there is natural food available.

The second strategy is to rear the fish well into the spring and release them at about 100/#. Released after the reach this size will generally increase their survival and they will be going into the lake while there is a good food supply but they need to be released before the waters get to warm.

Finally a strategy that is become more common is to hold and rear the fry through the summer and release them in the fall when the water temperatures begin to cool. While these fish are much expensive to rear and more of challenge for the fish culturists they do survival at higher rates than when released at smaller sizes. This strategy is being used more when there are known unusual survival problems at the smaller sizes or the total number of eggs/fry available is lower than normally needed.

The larger the fry are when they are released the better they will survive. The overall survival will depend on many other variables as well. A major factor would be the age at which they reach sexual maturity. Most of our fish mature between age 3 and age 5 with the fastest growing fish maturing earlier than the slower growing ones. It should be obvious that fish maturing at age 5 would have a lower survival than those maturing at age 3. Fry released in the spring of the year in really good conditions might have a survival of 5 t0 10% at the start of that 3 summer of growing. On the average one might only expect something like a 1 to 2% survival.

Spring fry planting densities might be in that 100 to 200 fish/acre range. Thus larger lakes will recieve more fish than smaller ones. Smaller lakes (less than a couple hundred acres) are generally better rainbow trout lakes than kokanee which do well in the larger waters. This is due in at least part to have the two enter fisheries. With kokanee we don't see much contribution of the kokanee to catches until the final year of their life, which typcially is age 3 or 4. As a result much of the biomass of kokanee is tied up in fish that are not contributing to the fishery at any one time. With rainbows the fry grow quickly and often begin contributing to fsihery within months of being planted with most of the biomass contributing to the fishery.

Predation on young kokanee fry by bass and other shallow water predators is not much of a problem. The kokanee are pelagic where they are feeding on zooplankton. However they do support a significant predator base of such fish as lake trout, bull trout, or other large pelagic foraging trout.

Because the kokanee do not enter the fishery right away to look at the planting records that will produce this year's fishery we need to look several years back. For example the fish that will produce fish this year (2008) we would look at the releases in 2005 (4 yr. olds) and 2006 (3 year olds).

Tight lines
Curt

 

[STEELIE ADDICT]

That is great information Smalma, thanks.

 

[fishing bear]

That is good info. Now here one for you where do they spawn if the lake is spring fed and there are no feeder streams.