Yesterday, April 22, 2024, I went early in the evening to measure water depth at the inlet to a big culvert. From the road I could see there was no water. It’s always a bit discomfiting when that happens, but less surprising this time than some.
Going down to look through the culvert, to see if there was water at the other end, I found there actually was just a little water between cobbles and boulders in the lowest spot before the culvert. And in that water two prickly sculpin and one tiny fish that looked like a salmon. At the other end of the culvert was just a puddle where mud prevented all the water from draining out. I could see movement in the puddle.
Just a stones throw horizontally from the bottom of the culvert there was water in the stream, and another stones throw from there the Stó:lō, the Fraser River. But from the culvert to the water was a vertical difference of a couple metres. Even though the river should come up soon, the sculpins and tiny salmon wouldn’t survive long enough for that. Maybe whatever was moving in the puddle wouldn’t either.
I had nothing with me to try to catch or carry fish, and had other things I needed to tend to, so I told the one salmon and the sculpins that if they made it through the night I’d be back to try to help them out.
Went back as soon as I could in the morning, and my heart sank. There was no water at all where the tiny salmon and sculpins had been. It was hardly even damp between the rocks. I found the tiny salmon first. Dead of course. No sign of the sculpins. Maybe a heron or something ate them?
Just in case, I lifted a couple of rocks, and under one was a sculpin with some eggs! No water. Tough little sculpin there gasping in the air. So I scooped it up and into a bucket I’d filled with water from the stream. The sculpin perked up right away! Put the eggs in too. No idea whether they might make it, but why not.
There was a hole that seemed like the only place the other sculpin might be. Too small a hole to get a hand in, and boulders too large to move. I reached around a boulder and poked in a hole from the other side. I touched something that moved! Startled, I pulled my hand back, and at the same time the second sculpin came into view at the side of the hole I could see. But I couldn’t get hold of it from either side.
So I took the one sculpin and its eggs to the water, filled my bucket, and poured it by the hole the second sculpin was in. The water just disappeared. Got another bucket of water and that one brought the water level between the rocks up to about what it had been the night before. So I figured the sculpin had a chance, at least for the moment, and turned to the puddle at the other end of the culvert.
The puddle took quite a bit longer than I’d expected because there were a lot more fish than I’d imagined there could be in that muddy puddle. Caught 118 salmon there. 105 of them about 40 – 50 mm long, 12 about 70 – 80 mm, and one ‘big’ about 120 mm.
That wasn’t all of them, but most. I was getting worried that my muddying the water as I moved around catching them might be getting harmful. So stopped for today.
On the way out, I checked on the sculpin again. The water I’d poured was gone, but the sculpin was at the entrance to the hole, laying there gasping in the air. I’d barely be able to fit a couple of fingers in the hole, and figured as soon as I touched it the sculpin would disappear out of reach again. But this time I bent the handle of a little aquarium net, and managed to get it into the hole around the other side of the boulder and poke it through to try to limit where the sculpin could escape to.
Of course the sculpin tried to go for cover as soon as I tried to touch it. I gently worked at it with the net handle, trying to manoeuvre the fish around to where I could get it. It was pretty touch and go. I’d touch the fish and it would go to where I couldn’t. But finally I managed to get its tail between two fingers and pull it out of the hole!
It made my day to see that sculpin swim strongly around the bucket of water before being released downstream. A morning well spent.
Sure would like some rain.
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