Forgotten Treasures #3: TROUT FISHING IN THE BERKELEY HILLS

wrote:
Around here it's "Rio Grande River"

Not big Rio Grande River?

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

wrote:
Around here it's "Rio Grande River"

bh



Urban fisheries often have the largest trout available in a given
drainage. As trout rivers enter more populated areas,
pollution in various forms enter the system. This pollution can increase
the fertility of relatively sterile rivers so they can produce more and
larger fish. The Bow River is the most famous example of this.

In the Rockies, this pollution is generally from water returning after
irrigating fields and runoff from lawns etc. In addition, water temps in
these areas generally rise and the rivers gradually begin to become warm
water fisheries. The very biggest trout in these drainages generally
live in or just above these transition zones. These transition zones are
areas where the water is still cool enough to support trout but warm
enough to start supporting warm water fishes. Trout population densities
are usually lower (often much lower) than in upstream sections, but the
average sized fish is MUCH bigger.

Another plus is that these fisheries are often ignored. Usually they
don't look like trout water and anglers pass them by on their way to
"better" waters.

Willi

On Thu, 14 Jul 2005 09:38:18 -0600, rw
wrote:

San Francisquito Creek is near my house in Menlo Park, along the
boundary of Menlo Park and Palo Alto. This in on the Peninsula, on the
opposite side of the bay from Berkeley. There are occasional steelhead
in the creek, which is amazing to me because it's completely dried up in
the summer. I suppose the fish spawn in the headwaters, which have at
least some water year-round.

Really a stretch trying to remember where I read about rainbows and
the advantages of spring spawning but I did go to my fav-o-rite and
best of all books about trout & their habitat - Trout Streams by Paul
Needham and found this about steelhead - "They are good fish to plant
in small, cold lakes; for being spring spawners, they will utilize the
tributary streams that later in the summer may dry up or become very
low."

From somewhere else - don't remember whrere but I'll haunt the
bookcase & hopefully will find it - the spring flows of cold water
with high oxygen content serve the rainbow, their eggs and young well
as they spawn, hatch, grow and are out before the streams dy up in the
summer and they are thus favored because of the lack of predators in a
seasonally flowing stream.

Kiyu