Since the 1950s, fishery agencies on Lake Michigan have pursued Lake Trout Salvelinus namaycush rehabilitation through Sea Lamprey Petromyzon marinus control, harvest regulations, and stocking millions of fish annually. Stocking was prioritized at four historically important spawning locations beginning in 1985, and coded wire tags (CWTs) were used to help evaluate performance. We used data from coded‐wire‐tagged fish captured in fishery‐independent surveys from 1998 to 2014 to evaluate relative postrelease survival of Lake Trout…Read more

Photo: USFWS

User‐friendly stream temperature models populated with on‐site data may help in developing strategies to manage temperatures of individual stream reaches that are subject to climate change. We used the field‐tested Stream Segment Temperature model (U.S. Geological Survey) to simulate how altering discharge, groundwater input, channel wetted width, and shade prevents the temperatures of White Mountain, Arizona, stream reaches from exceeding the thermal tolerance of Apache Trout Oncorhynchus apache, both under existing conditions and under a climate change scenario…Read more

As part of the Snake River Sockeye Salmon Oncorhynchus nerka recovery effort, a dedicated smolt rearing facility was constructed in 2013 near Springfield, Idaho. In‐hatchery performance and survival were typical for the species, but unexpectedly high mortality rates were observed in the first cohorts of Springfield‐reared smolts upon release into Redfish Lake Creek (RFLC) and during out‐migration. In response, a series of iterative experiments was conducted to identify the cause of the morbidity and mortality observed and to test a range of strategies to mitigate effects on postrelease survival. In the search for possible contributing factors, a difference in water chemistry was noted…Read more