The other night I drove to the Park headquarters in PA to listen to a lecture by Sam Brenkman...he is the BIO in charge of that Dolly study they are doing in the park, focused mainly on the Hoh. I could talk about it for hours but, in a nutshell, basically we all have it wrong.

What we are catching are Bull Trout. There are only three places in the park where Dolly Varden are found and they are all above anadromous fish barriers. The Bull Trout head up river to spawn in May, June, early July. They DO NOT hang out for any length of time, anywhere except the spawning grounds.. Basically, they blast right up to the spawning ground, which has been identified as the stretch between Lewis Meadows and the campground at the park.

When they are done spawning they head back out to the ocean. They seem to have an affinity for the mouths/estuaries of other rivers as they have marked fish in the estuaries of Goodman, Hoh, Queets, Quinault and Raft rivers, all of which were originally caught, implanted with a radio transmitter and released in the Hoh.

During the course of the study they received 87 Bull Trout carcasses from the Hoh's, the largest of which was almost twelve pounds. Kinda makes that 14+ I've been telling people I caught a little more believable....

The funniest bit about the whole study is that I didn't really learn anything I hadn't already kinda figured out on my own, you know? If he would have asked me before the study I could have told him most of that stuff by experience, I think. Like spawn timing, location of spawning area, and the 'blasting right to the spawning grounds' behavior they observed.

Ok...I take it back. I did learn that they can live up to 14 years in the wild and that I've been referring to them as 'Dolly Varden' incorrectly as have most of us, including WDFW.

Anyway...I'll prolly post this...there are probably a bunch of things I'm forgetting. If you have any specific questions, I'll try to answer them as best a mere observer can!

Anyone else go check out this awesome lecture?

How does one tell the difference between a Dolly and a Bull Trout?

Or are they the same fish and we are just calling them by the wrong name?

I'll give you the non-biologist answer....

If you are fishing where there are anadromous fish present, its a Bull Trout.

Without a sample of genetic material it would be hard to tell, except that we are learning about the separateness of the two populations, with the Dollies being present usually above anadromous fish barriers.

One exception to this rule is the Elwha, where artificial anadromous barriers have been erected. Here is the only spot in the park Bull Trout are found above such barriers.

I believe there is a concurrent study being done in the Skagit using very much the same methodologies. I believe the preliminary results of each study support this idea.

Hey h2o - It's been a while... Good info. So the biggest difference is that the Bulls are anadromous and the Dolly's arn't? When did they reclassify the Hoh fish?

Hmm - Could the two breed if one stock is not doing to well, kinda like Bows and Steelies...

Shot you an email as well.

Nothing has really been reclassified per se...

Whether the two could interbreed wasn't discussed. It has been shown however that Dolly Varden will interbreed with Brook Trout producing sterile offspring.

Its kind of another example of what I call a 'regional misnomer'...like when people out here refer to the spotted skunk as 'civet cat'. Civet cats are a rare and nearly extinct relative of the mongoose that are indigenous to the jungles Indonesia...but try telling that to a local resident out this way and the most likely reaction you'll get is 'Huh?'

I have unofficially renamed them 'Bully's' in my fishing parlance, providing everyone with another opportunity to not know what the hell I am talking about, hehe.

That's some great info. I've hooked bulls with sea lice 40 miles upriver on the Skagit so I agree with the "move upriver fast" statement. I've heard Bios talk about fish over 40" which would be 15+lbs easy. Hoh migration timing seems a bit earlier than the Skagit.

According to Univ B.C bulls and Dollys are interbreeding in the Fraser drainage. Those same fish also move through Puget Sound rivers.

Did he talk about spawning mortality or outmigration of kelts?

Okay Bull Trout aficionados, I want you to take the test. The Montana Dept. of Wildlfe has a very cool web site. Check it out at www.fwp.state.mt.us/bulltroutid/

Let us know how you did. I think it's a great learning tool.

H20: I for one have no problem believing your 14 lb Bullie. I fish every year in a system, that shall remain unnamed, where every pool holds 10 t0 50 bullies. (I guess they are. They are in a system where access to the ocean is not possible - east of Idaho, but the biologist there tells me they are bullies.) Anyway they have done several studies of these bullies, including actual counts based on passage thru a weir. Average size was found to be about 6-8 lbs, with the larges fish well over 15 lbs. They are easy to catch on flies the size of a small cutthroat, but I don't fish them as they are in pre spawn mode. In recent years they have head closures in place to protect the bullies. Which is almost too bad as there are great numbers of cutties in the system, which is what we are targeting.

Well, I took the test not knowing really anything about bull trout other than they are hard to tell from a dolly. I scored 8 out of 15. I did well on the species identification part but not so well on the others.

Dave...

That Carlin quote was my very first sig! I gave up after quoting Bill Hicks though and just go with a straight sight gag now...

The study being done is specific to ONP. The average size Bully caught in the tribal nets was five pounds as I recall. As Smalma pointed out to me in a thread about Dollies a long time ago, the adfluvial or lake spawning variety attain the biggest size.* Probably the reason for so many 'big one' rumors that come out of the upper Elwha and the reason those fish in M, err, your zipper, are the size they are, in spite of of their inability to reach the ocean.


* - Which brings up another thing...

The conversation smalma and I were having was about Dolly Varden. In the regs they refer to the fish as Dolly's...right? Both in the Skagit and the Hoh though it appears that the only populations are really bull trout.

That is, IF I've completely understood the information I've taken in.....

A little more info to quell or increase the confusion on these guys. It wasn't until the 1970s that taxonomists found enough differences between stocks of Dolly Varden that a new species, the bull trout was separated out. In Puget Sound streams, it wasn't until the early 90s, I believe, that bull trout presence was clarified. Until then, it was thought that the anadromous varieties were all Dolly Varden, like in Alaska, and the residents were bull trout, like in Idaho and Montana. Turns out about 90 percent of the fish tested from Puget Sound streams have been bulls, anadromous or residents. The two species are very difficult to tell apart. In BC, one scientist found that by measuring four different sets of meristics (I can't recall which at the moment), he could tell Dollies from Bulls. But Smalma (our local dolly/bull expert) looked at a fair number in Puget Sound streams and found that the method didn't really work on Puget Sound fish. The only real way to tell the two apart is by genetic tests, but given most data these days, if you catch one, you probably got a bull.

Some of the acoustic tagging data in Puget Sound also show that the fish basin hop. It's been shown that some Snohomish and Skagit born fish will move around in both streams, although its thought that they spawn only in the stream of birth. One fish that I tagged on Jetty Island at the mouth of the Snohomish in April was caught downstream of Darrington in the Sauk in August. That's probably why you can't keep bulls in the salt (you're actually not supposed to fish for them; I'm fishin for cutts, ahem). No matter where you are in Puget Sound, you really don't know what basin the fish is from. Skagit and Snohomish basin populations appear pretty healthy and expanding, but populations in other Puget Sound streams are largely unknown and many may be quite small.

Bulls are fall spawners that spawn upstream of almost all other salmon because the eggs need very cold water to successfully incubate. That's why they're found principally in streams draining glaciers or streams that receive lots of snowmelt (like the Hoh, Skagit, and Skykomish).

We're learning more and more about these fish every year, but when I have rod in hand, I'm still hardpressed to call one anything other than a dollie. Because they look alike and have similar behaviors, WDFW manages them as the Dolly Varden/Bull trout complex, and essentially doesn't distinguish between the two.

Ok here's some info on Dollies and Bull Trout.

The only Dolly Varden in Washington exists between the Cascades and the Sound in the Snohomish System and northward. Their range then continues north all the way to the Mackenzie River in the Yukon. The Dolly Varden we have is actually one of two sub species, the Southern Dolly Varden, which has a range from the Snohomish System to the Kenai Peninsula. The Northern variant has a range from the Kenai around the coast of Alaska to the Mackenzie River. So the only true Dollies found in the Lower 48 exist in a small area here in Washington from the Snohomish north.

Bull trout on the other hand are found in a much larger range. Bull Trout (actually char) are found in all of Washington, most of Montana west of the Continental Divide, most of Idaho except a portion in the south eastern part of the state. All rivers in Oregon that drain into the Columbia but they are also found in the northern Klamath and its tributaries also in Oregon. The McCloud River in California oddly used to have Bull Trout but they have been extinct since 1970 because of the Shasta Dam. In Canada the Bull Trout has a range of all of B.C, the southern tip of Alaska and the western half of Alberta. Oddly no native Bull Trout are found on any off shore islands in B.C or Alaska while Dollies are native on some of these islands.

Bull Trout and Dollies do occasionally hybridize but do not make a "hybrid swarm" like rainbows do to cutthroat populations. Instead they maintain their identities, much in the same way as pinks and chums also can accidentally form a hybrid, so if a Bull/Dolly hybrid spawns with a Bull Trout the offspring would be pure Bull Trout. The Skagit river does contain the highest number of hybrid fish.

I hope this shines some insight into the mysterious world of our beautiful native char.

Good info fj15. Where did you come across it? I would note that there appear to be true Dolly populations in the upper Sol Duc and upper Hoh as well (Hoh mentioned above), in areas above barriers.

"The only Dolly Varden in Washington exists between the Cascades and the Sound in the Snohomish System and northward."

This is not true at least according to what I just learned. There are populations of Dolly Varden in the upper Sol Duc (above the falls), North Fork Quinault(upper) and Grey Wolf rivers. These are only the 'confirmed populations as a real census of some of the areas in the park is nearly impossible. These have been genetically verified by 'fish dude' down in Montana...where is it University of Montana?

Bull trout do not have to have access to salt water so even fish above natural barriers can be Bull Trout. The book I got this from was printed in 2002 so the info is not old. The books id Trout and Salmon of North America by Robert J. Behnke. The author is a Fish Biologist and has put many years into writting this book. The book is actually the best book on salmonoids I have ever read. Each species has more than one realistic illustration, a distribution map and 4-10 pages on each fish (biology, discription, distribution, evolution and classification, and conservation sections). The book covers every salmonoid in North America including many the only exsist in a couple creeks or small drainages. Also included are some extinced salmonoids. I got he book at Borders and it is quite expensive, $40, since it is an hard cover but i believe it was well worth it. If you don't think you want it, just go take a look at it and you might just change your mind.

LOL! Just found out you can get it for only $28 in the internet. $14 for a used one. I gusse I should have shopped around before I bought it at the store!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/det...nce&s=books

Funny....isn't Behnke the geneticist/trout BIO from Montana I was just talking about?

The book sleve says the Behnke is a Prof. in the Dept. of Fishery and Wildlife Biology at Colorado State University. It also says he lives in Colorado.

FJ15: The understanding of our local sea-run bull trout is evolving so quickly, you won't find accurate info in books.

I would agree with the above comment that our knowledge of what WDFW calls Dolly Varden/bull trout is evolving so rapidly that Behnke's book, while accurate at the time he was writing it (pre 2002), is not up to date. Some of his statements are highly qualified, "Large, silvery char known from Puget Sound that run up tributary rivers are probably bull trout" (p.319). He states that "The Skagit River has the highest known incidence of bull trout x Dolly Varden hybrids, probably stimulated by its human-induced modified environment." (p.297) Anybody know what study showed this? I was under the impression that, as is true of the Peninsula, Dolly Varden in the Skagit drainage occur mainly, if not entirely, above barriers insurmountable to bull trout.

Dont forget though that some fish above barriers (dollies) such as falls will get flushed down river or simply swim over the falls. Its the same straying that salmon/steelhead do to protect the genetic diversity, or so I would assume.