Big Spring Spawning and Thoughts

[krayfish2]

If in fact the issue is excess nitrogen in the strem, I'd think that those levels would have drpped since the closing of the facility. Was the hatchery completely cleaned out or is their waste leaking from the settling ponds? Could also be a product of runoff from local agriculture. I'm not familiar with blistering of fish due to high nitrogen levels. If the fish are spawning with backs exposed to the winter air, it could almost be blistering from frostbite.

http://water.usgs.gov/edu/nitrogen.html

 

[AkDan76]

The weekend of the 15th we saw two browns spawning...they were coming down the ditch on sat in a rolling circle (think tarpon).

Sunday the 16th they were set up in front of the center 'piller' at the bottom of the ditch doing the deed between the damn and the tree laying over the water. We watched those two for awhile that morning. I never seen hide nor hair of them after that weekend.

I fished the next two weeks here and their and didn't see the brookies in the ditch getting going until my last day I fished which was the 1st. I did venture down river a bit but spent most of my time in the ditch.

Odd part was they were grabbing each other mid belly and swimming off. Fun to watch, cant say I've seen that in spawning behavior.

The letort in the heritage section looked paired up and ready to roll the day the storm came through. I didn't see any full on activity, per say but they were getting a bit aggressive so I'm assuming it was just starting.

 

[Chaz]

As I've said several times, Big Spring Brookies spawn very late, the original strain used to spawn in January. As for rainbows, some spawn during the fall some spawn in the February/March part of winter. The difference for bows is, were they from more recent hatchery stock or from stock put in the creek in the late 1800's. Earlier stocked fish spawn in late winter. Recently stocked fish spawn in fall. The fall spawning bows tend to spawn around Thanksgiving.