Fishin’
On the sixteenth of June we all went fishing in the Ellikarrmiut Kuigat River with a seine net. We would have two or three people holding the net and the others would go upstream and come splashing down the river to attempt and get the fish into the seine. We were out there for a couple of hours and we caught five starry flounder which are also known as Platichthys stellatus. The average length of the starry flounder was 169 mm.
On this seine we also pulled in five chum salmon smolts. These were pretty small and hard to identify, but we looked in the Fishes of Alaska book to find the correct species. A chum’s scientific name is Orchorynchus keta. The smolts were pretty small coming in at an average size of 41 mm.
Also on the seine we pulled in two pink salmon or, Onchorynchus gorbuscha. These looked a lot like the chum smolts but they didn’t have spots on their body like the chum did. The two fish had an average size of 37.5 mm.
That day we caught one sculpin and one dolly varden as well. The spatulate sculpin; or Icelus spatula was striped and had spiky fins and was 100 mm. The dolly varden also called Salvelinus Malma, was a pretty small juvenile at 104 mm.
On June 19th we seined some more and we caught eleven dolly varden. We also set some traps they day before and in these traps the day before and in those traps we found four more dolly varden. Because of hungry stomachs and tired legs we didn’t measure the length of any of the fish. =D
