AHFMD!

If I've said it once, I've said it 100 times. But certainly not everyone agrees.



This one may have been a hook/release mortality from a NON-believer. Or perhaps a natural in-river mortality for this hatchery winter steelhead. Regardless, as Paker has been known to say about AHFMD, "Yep.... it's dead all right!"

I find it interesting that even the otters and raccoons didn't find this entire winter run fit to eat. Guess they don't like that nasty tail meat either!

Could you tell if it was a male or female? In the streams i worked on, females spawned, started eating, and boogied to salt. The males, on the other hand, essentially practiced spawn till you die which makes the carcass have not a whole lot of fat and would be, I suspect, not very tasty. We even found one still hanging around in August.

Seeing post spawn mortalities in steelhead (both hatchery and wild) is not unusual. Like CM it is more common to find dead males than females but have seen both.

On years with low waters tend to see more mortalities than during higher flows; higher flows flushing the post fish from the system faster reducing in-river mortalities? That may be why I have seen more wild fish mortalities (in closed seasons/waters). On some of the systems that I have on we noticed that the number of repeat spawners returning in a given year was influenced by both the escapement the year before and the flows during the spawning period.

Curt

Another thing that helps survival, i think, is the presence of lots to eat in the stream and estuary. We had some female kelts that were plugged with carpenter ants. That has to help.

Speaking of carpenter ants, years ago I caught a late-run winter hen on the Dungeness in May (she was chrome-bright and her eggs were already loose in the skein). Her stomach was packed hard with big black carpenter ants.