Parley's Creek Cuthroat Spawn 6/6/12

Yesterday I went up to Parley's Creek on my lunch break and volunteered for a couple of hours with the Division of Wildlife.  I had talked to Jordan Nielsen who works out of the Springville, UT field office the day before and he invited me to come up and help out while they survey some of the cutthroat that they had shocked the day before.  Jordan gave us a little pep talk and thanked me and the rest of the volunteers for coming.  Then he ran through what we were going to do and how to do it.  He had us bring males and females in at separate times to the station that they had setup before I got down there.  The fish that we brought in from the creek were already separated so that part was easy.  When we brought them to the station the first thing that we did was put the males and females in separate holding tanks (55 gallon garbage cans full of water).  The part I thought was interesting was that each holding area contained a chemical in it that calms the fish down.  The guys that worked for the division began by measuring all the fish that we had brought them.  Then, they took the females and extracted all the eggs they could without hurting them.  Then, they milked the males and put the two together so the magic could happen.

Most of what I was doing was releasing these fish back. Here is a video of me releasing one of these beautiful fish back into the lake.

Here is another small video clip

I am mad that this next video did not turn out the way I wanted it to.  The guy that took it for me did not realize that there was water on the lens.  Oh well, the fish I am holding in this video was prob one of the longer fish of the day coming in at 21.5 inches long

Here are some pics of some of the other fish that we got to release.

There are some big fish that run up that creek to spawn.  Unfortunately all of those fish that hold in Mountain Dell Reservoir are not fishable due to the fact that the Res is closed to fishing.  The only shot that anyone would have at some nice cuts like these is if some of them are still upstream when the river opens up to fishing on the second Saturday in July this year.  I guess there are some nice fish in Little Dell Res upsteam but if anyone does fish that, make sure you only use flies and lures only and immediately release any fish with a cutthroat marking.

It was a lot of fun and I hope that they call me next time they do it because it turned out to be a really nice and enjoyable way to spend my lunch break! 
Jimmy Sorenson
6/6/12