Altogether this fall there have been four chum egg takes for Mossom Creek Hatchery broodstock.  One was on Mossom, and three have occurred on the Alouette River.  Big thanks to all the Centennial students, community volunteers and our Fisheries and Oceans Canada experts Sandie and Scott for their assistance.  We now have over 100,000 chum eggs incubating at the hatchery.

We have had a very strong chum run this year.  For the first time we have had the benefit of a number of meticulous spawner survey walks done by one of our new volunteers.  As a result, we know that there were about 400 chum in the creek at one time, that they travelled much farther upstream than observed in previous years and that our coho run has started and is also looking good.  Over 30 coho spawners were counted in Mossom this past week and at least half of them were wild stock.  They were not adipose fin-clipped and this indicates that they did not come from the hatchery but from the creek itself.  This is an indication that our 17 or so years of coho enhancement is beginning to pay off.

Please visit the Picasa website   https://picasaweb.google.com/104352621181845769774/SalmonEggTakingNov2011?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCL_Z5fCR3oPrYQ&feat=directlink&gsessionid=8fFPot6N6i6GGaJKSA-myw#  to view  Kiyoshi Takahashi’s photos of the November 9th chum egg take on the Alouette.

Other photos of recent hatchery activity will be posted in our photo galleries.