Henry’s Fork Foundation has performed many trout migration/mobility studies using radio telemetry in the upper portion of the river. A new telemetry study is underway in the lower portion (below the Chester diversion dam).  This study is concentrating on brown trout.

Twenty-four brown trout, ranging between 14 and 24 inches were caught with electro-fishing and instrumented with radio transmitters. The location of each trout is tracked periodically and made available as Google earth placemarks. They tracked the locations often during spawning season, and will continue tracking through 2009.

Watching the video below shows the surgery where they implant the radio tracker and transmitter. Ouch. Adding all of this hardware has to affect the behavior of the fish, but from my experience, flawed information is much better than no information.

My take-aways:

• What an outstanding resource we have in river-keeper organizations like Henry’s Fork Foundation.
• Thanks to Jack, Mike, Girls, Wallace, Fish Lips and Emery for sponsoring fish.
• Donate to Henry’s Fork Foundation, the money is put to good use.
• 151.102, watch out, I know where you live

We took a family weekend at Lake Tahoe. Who would have thought we would have snow during Memorial Day weekend in California?

I was able to get away for one day to fish. The West Fork of the Carson river flows through a beautiful valley, called Hope valley. Other nearby valleys are called Faith and Charity.

The meadow section of the river is gorgeous, but tough fishing. This is very shallow, with undercut banks and some deeper pools (2-3 feet deep). My bead-head prince nymph was unable to bring anything out of these pools.

I did enjoy the walk. After passing a couple of bait guys within 100 yards of the parking lot, I walked another mile and half with the river to myself.

After a few bumped knees, I had my first and only fish of the day, a 10 inch wild rainbow. I can describe how spunky it was, the beautiful bold colors, the gorgeous parr marks and the joy of catching a wild trout. However, it was just a 10 inch rainbow.

Continuing down the hill, the river flows past Woodfords, a remount station for the Pony Express. This is where the route came south of Lake Tahoe on the way to Sacramento.

How cool was this? A bonus day fishing, beautiful scenery, and accidentally learning some history.