Saving young fish from dying channel

NILE VALLEY -- Call it the Great Fish Rescue of 2009.

Some 35 biologists sloshed hip deep through the frigid backwaters of a dying river channel Thursday.

Working in teams of three, one attracted and stunned fish with an electrically charged pole, while two others scooped them up with nets and buckets.

In all, they pulled nearly 500 small chinook salmon, steelhead and rainbow trout from pools left behind after construction crews rerouted the Naches River earlier this week.

The fish were then trucked about six miles upstream and released.

"Rather than leave them up there drying in the riverbed, we're going to give them a new spot," said Eric Anderson, a biologist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. "They get a new home."

The river was rerouted earlier this week when crews diverted water away from a channel that, if left alone, threatened to further destabilize the hill where a massive landslide Oct. 11 had already buried a section of State Route 410.

Biologists from 10 different state and federal agencies spent Wednesday and Thursday pulling fish from a marshy, quarter-mile stretch of former riverbed.

Creeping through reeds and branches, they patrolled the ponds slowly, peering into the murky waters. They wore rubber boots, hip waders and "a lot of layers," said Jennifer Scott, a biologist with the state wildlife department.

Every now and then, one of them broke the stillness with a jab and twist of the net.

"Did you get him?" one man asked.

"Bucket. Bucket. I better go find a bucket," another said.

"You got to be ready," instructed a third.

Nearly all the fish were young spring chinook salmon, steelhead and trout. The biggest one rescued was an 8-inch cutthroat trout.

Bigger fish tend to escape on their own, said Craig Broadhead, assistant environmental manager for the state Department of Transportation.

"It's really the little guys," Broadhead said. "They'll stay and they'll come under rocks."

The rescuers even found a lamprey, an eel-like jawless fish considered to be a rare find in the Naches River. They did not, however, find any bull trout, an endangered species.

While the rescuers warmed themselves by a campfire, Chuck Hamstreet of the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife measured the rescued fish one by one and dropped them into a tank full of aerated water in the bed of a green Ford pickup.

By midday Thursday, the crews had wrapped up the rescue mission, which is standard operating procedure any time construction disrupts the flow of a river. But biologists will return every few weeks to check for leftovers.

"We always miss some," said Eric Bartrand of the state Fish and Wildlife Department.

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 509-930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.