Project field is fully contained with a much lower volume of water leaving the field only through the modified board with a hole/notch. Therefore, the rate of exit of fish from the field has reduced to about 1–3 fish per day. However, the science team continues counting and releasing fish daily. We have counted about 50 salmon thus far. Based on salmon size-class assessment, we suspect we have counted mostly Fall run (about 40), 1 late-Fall run, 7 Winter run and 2 Spring run during seining and fyke net trap operations. We have also observed splittail, shad, and hatchery steelhead within the study fields. Occasional predators include bass and sunfish, and larger predators are being sampled for diet contents via gastric lavage and released.
The UCD Team successfully PIT-tagged nearly 4,500 lab-reared salmon and deployed all of the fish cages (to grow JSATS-taggable fish) into the field. The release of free-swimming and caged fish has begun. In addition, 100 of our 200 Late-Fall yearlings have been double-tagged with PIT and JSATS and were also released into the field. We are now monitoring movements of these individuals through the seven PIT-wired boxes.
Both the bypass and dryside fields continue to be monitored, in real-time, with autonomous HOBO data loggers and will remain so until end of the field season, or another flood approaches, at which point the real time system from the bypass field would be retrieved.
The grower continues to refine irrigation timing and assess the benefits of trying out the two holes in the upper boxes. We believe this adjustment being tried this year (used all single-hole boards last year) will help to equalize flow and enable the grower to better maintain desired flood depths of 10–12 inches in each check.