Biologists from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife recently reported that they had ‘re-discovered’ a population of isolated rainbow trout in the Upper North Umpqua River basin.
A few weeks ago, a group of biologists headed up to Upper North Umpqua River Basin to search out familiar water bodies for previously undiscovered isolated trout populations.
These isolated (usually above a waterfall or in some way cut off from accessing other parts of a watershed) trout live in very cold conditions, and are supremely adept at adapting to life in our high-mountain lakes.
Biologists routinely take some stock from some of these isolated populations and build what they call a fishwich, which is just a combination of a couple of different isolated fish stocks that are use to create more fish for stocking the cold high-mountain lakes.
After utilizing the same strains for many years, biologists get curious to see if there are other isolated strains they can use to help enhance the diversity of the trout they’re planting.
The Upper North Umpqua basin has cutthroat, but they don’t have a lot of rainbow trout, so finding new populations to draw from is always exciting.
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