“If it has small pebbles, it’s a good location, and he’s going to stake it out and patrol it and not let any other males take it.” “The male is trying to attract the female, and when he heads up Taylor Creek in the fall, he is the one that has to be a smart fish to find the right location to have their rocky nest known as a redd,” says Norman. It’s all about attracting a mate and fending off aggressors that may try to interfere with procreation. The females turn to pink with green tinges, while the males take on a deep red and develop a hump on their back, a hooked jaw and sharp teeth. Sensing the change in seasons and the smell of its birthplace, the salmon congregate at the mouth of Taylor Creek as they slowly begin to transform in anticipation of spawning. While drought years have forced salmon to attempt to spawn in another of Tahoe’s 63 tributaries, Taylor Creek remains the primary spawning ground for the kokanee. And after circling the lake over the years, the salmon knows all the distinct smells of the creeks and which one is home,” explains Norman. “When a salmon is hatched, the smell of its birth place is imprinted. Taylor Creek, a 2-mile tributary in South Lake Tahoe, is the ideal spawning ground for the kokanee due to the creekbed’s pea-sized pebbles that allow the fertilized eggs to be concealed while still receiving oxygen from the water’s flow. “When fall rolls around, the fish sense the drop in temperature and the change in light due to shorter days,” says Norman. In late September, the Forest Service increases the flow of water from the dam at Fallen Leaf Lake through Taylor Creek and into Tahoe. “They swim in large schools, usually clockwise, circumnavigating the lake over and over throughout the year,” explains Norman. After a few years, the kokanee began to spawn in Taylor Creek, and annual stocking of salmon fingerlings began soon after, to the delight of sport fisherman (though that ceased just a few years ago).Īt maturity, the blue-silver kokanee grow to roughly 12-16 inches in Lake Tahoe where they feed primarily on zooplankton. The second version is that they decided to experiment and see if the kokanee would take to the lake and released fingerlings on purpose.”Īnd take to the lake they did. “One is that a couple of employees were out cleaning the tanks and, oops, it overflowed and some of the fish rolled into the lake. Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit’s interpretive services department. “We’ve heard two different versions,” says Jean Norman of the U.S. Kokanee salmon were introduced into Lake Tahoe in 1944 by a fish hatchery in Tahoe City, but the circumstances surrounding their introduction are murky.
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