Mike Wilkinson

The latest results of the study being conducted at the Lower Niagara River and Oak Orchard Creek Sites.

This was a 4 year stocking study that was designed to compare the relative survival and return rates of 3 lots of fish. 40,000 fish in each of the three lots were fin clipped for identification, One lot was direct stocked fish from the Caledonia Hatchery, the second lot was direct stocked fish from the Salmon River Hatchery and the third lot was pen reared fish from the Salmon River Hatchery. Each of the lots received a different fin clip to identify which group the fish belonged to. The three clips used were Right Pectoral; Left Ventricle and Right Ventricle.

The fin clipping part of the study was switched between the Oak Orchard Creek Site and the Lower Niagara River site, alternating years so that the fish's stocking site could be identified by age analysis. This happened between 1999 and 2002

The following is a summary of the results to date:

Year Class	Stocking Site	Return Site		Caledonia Direct	Salmon River Direct	Salmon River Pen Reared

1999	Oak Orchard	Lower Niagara	2001	4	9	4
			2002	5	2	7
			2003	2	0	1
Total:				11	11	12

Year Class	Stocking Site	Return Site		Caledonia Direct	Salmon River Direct	Salmon River Pen Reared

1999	Oak Orchard	Oak Orchard	2001	20	4	27
			2002	18	9	31
			2003	0	2	0
Total:				38	15	58

Year Class	Stocking Site	Return Site		Caledonia Direct	Salmon River Direct	Salmon River Pen Reared

2000	Lower Niagara	Lower Niagara	2001	6	35	16
			2002	46	52	52
			2003	90	115	113
			2004	0	1	0
Total:				142	203	181

Year Class	Stocking Site	Return Site		Caledonia Direct	Salmon River Direct	Salmon River Pen Reared

2000	Lower Niagara	Oak Orchard	2001	1	1	1
			2002	3	3	2
			2003	4	6	12
			2004	1	0	0
Total:				9	10	15

Year Class	Stocking Site	Return Site		Caledonia Direct	Salmon River Direct	Salmon River Pen Reared

2001	Oak Orchard	Lower Niagara	2002	1	2	0
			2003	12	8	8
			2004	3	4	8
Total:				16	14	16

Year Class	Stocking Site	Return Site		Caledonia Direct	Salmon River Direct	Salmon River Pen Reared

2001	Oak Orchard	Oak Orchard	2002	1	0	1
			2003	8	3	23
			2004	5	18	45
Total:				14	21	78

Year Class	Stocking Site	Return Site		Caledonia Direct	Salmon River Direct	Salmon River Pen Reared

2002	Lower Niagara	Lower Niagara	2003	10	18	18
			2004	14	32	20
Total:				24	50	38

Year Class	Stocking Site	Return Site		Caledonia Direct	Salmon River Direct	Salmon River Pen Reared

2002	Lower Niagara	Oak Orchard	2003	1	0	0
			2004	2	8	4
Total:				3	8	4

Conclusions So Far:

Oak Orchard Creek: Pen Reared Salmon River Fish show significantly better survival and return rates over Direct Stocked Salmon River Fish. Pen rearing results look to be promising in increasing returns at that site. Caledonia Fish did better than the Salmon River Direct Stocked fish for the 1999 year class of stocked fish, but that trend reversed itself with the 2001 year class and the Salmon River Direct Stocked group seemed to do better than the Caledonia Fish in that planting.

The water in Eighteenmile Creek is very similar to that found in Oak Orchard Creek and it is believed that Pen Rearing Project here will achieve the same remarkable results that they have experienced at the Oak.

One interesting thing to note is that there have been almost NO fin clipped fish returning to the Salmon River. That kind of clouds our theory that after the Caledonia Hatchery was take out of production in the early 90's and all of our fish came from the Salmon River Hatchery, that our fish were all returning to the Salmon instead of the streams in which they were planted. Of course, that still doesn't explain why our fall fishing completely fell apart at that point, but it seems that massive straying to the SR wasn't the problem. I am guessing that this was just due to very poor survival of Salmon River Hatchery fish stocked in western basin streams.

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