I was recently at the stamp falls fish ladder where the Robertson Creek Hatchery have been setup for a few weeks now, i'm guessing they are getting coho/chinook egg's / sperm.

Anyways my question to anyone who has ever maybe worked there or knows alittle something about fish ladder and hatchery programs.

Why do they close off the entire fish ladder for entire days, so that no fish can get threw the ladder they just get stacked and stacked on top of each other. Don't they want fish getting up and threw the ladder? There are so MANY fish at the mouth and in the ladder that I don't see why they do this. Hell the coho are actually trying to go up the falls there are that many down there because the ladder is closed off. Doesn't make sense though because there are still some sockeye in the system aswell.

Thanks for any insight, just curious .

Hey Tasteless,
It is not actually the hatchery staff at the fish ladder, it is actually a crew on contract to count fish passage through the fishway...they just have lots of gear that says Robertson Creek on it. The fish ladder is actually NEVER closed during salmon migration (other than maintenance I would assume). The reason you see the fish stacked up at the bottom is they don't really want to swim up a confined space and the flow through the ladder is not as high as the river so they don't want to go...it usually takes them a while to "figure it out" then you see a pulse of fish through as they tend to go up in groups. Same goes for most barriers to migration in rivers...fish pile up which is why downstream of falls are closed in lots of river.

If you stop at the ladder you'll see a TV monitor running, that is actually the fish passing through...the camera runs 24/7 during the migration. The count during daylight hours then record nightime and count in the fall period.

Cheers
RBF

Ah thanks for the info RBF, learning something everyday.

I was just asking because in the little spaces in the fish ladder themselves there was a bunch of coho just swimming idle near the sides, I will guess they were resting but it was a weird place to just be sitting since it was near a mouth of the rushing water coming down into the ladders themselves.

I even seen some fish trying to go up the white water part of the falls hah, kudos to them for trying lol.

So the little black box that is at the gates to the exit to the river again is just where the video camera is to count the fish as they swim threw it?