Mokelumne River Hatchery Steelhead Numbers On The Rise
Last month, the Mokelumne River Hatchery reported a record return of king salmon from the sea, which coincided with a closed fishing season throughout California. Now the hatchery is reporting a healthy amount of returning steelhead to the Moke.
Here’s the Stockton Record’s longtime outdoors reporter Dan Bacher with more:
The hatchery staff has counted 1,430 steelhead to date, including 769 adults and 661 fish under the hatchery’s adult size of 18 inches.
“The steelhead run is a good, healthy run, with a lot of fish compared to other years,” said Michelle Workman, Supervising Biologist?for EBMUD?Fisheries and Wildlife. “The size of the fish is similar to previous years.
“The hatchery is now spawning steelhead and they have about 250,000 eggs so far, probably from about 125 females if you assume that there are about 2000 eggs per female.”