was fishing the green the other day in the lower river. almost every square foot of grass that has been recently exposed by receeding water had a little lamprey about 4 inches. there was a little kid collecting dozens of them and putting them in a plastic jar. he and his dad thought that they were fresh water eels. so did i until i saw one start sucking on the side of the jar with a big round mouth and circular jaw. I have never seen anything like it. have any of you seen such numbers of little lampreys? do they swim up river to spawn there?
i have never even cought a fish with a lamprey still on it but i have caught many with lamprey marks.
the other thing i was thinking is that it may be a good reason to leave mergansers alone (other than the fact that it is stoupid to shoot them)on the rivers because they probably eat millions of these as they are so easy to catch. and that probably has an effect on the fish stocks that helps negate when they eat fish fry! does anyone know anything about this like maybe salmo g or someone with some biological knowledge on the subject??

and to think, i almost threw one into my golfish pond

Time to break out the pink worms.

Didn't think the local lampreys were fish sucking lampreys. They're "brook lampreys" and should be a lot smaller than the ones in the Great Lakes.

Years ago when I lived on the east coast some people used to dig these little lampreys and use them for bass bait.

Just food for thought. I also bet if people could get these in a little bigger size they could be brined and used for sturgeon bait.

I found the same thing on the Snoqualmie two summers ago. I asked the biologist . He said they spawn in the mud/silt of the slow parts of the rivers. I had never seen one as a kid and I grew up on the Snohomish and Sky. They are good food for several spiecies. The favorite food fo the Sturgeon in the Columbia and Snake systems. Seems like a pop boom the last few years however. Maybe just a cycle or the primary predator is in decline.

now there is an idea. they do look like the perfect bait. maybe i should collect some. some rocket red pro cure and you have the perfect live chum bait....

The larger Lampreys were the "HOT" bait for sturgeon in Yaqina bay, Newport Oregon. Could be the same anywhere. I would see quite few at night under the lights on the boat docks. A good sized dip net and quick wrist would do the trick.

Lupo,

It sounds like they're brook lamprey, a common freshwater critter. They are usually found in sandy, silty areas of rivers and creeks. A large number on grass seems like maybe they were scoured out of the silt by the recent high waters.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Yep there probably western brook lampreys. They are muck eaters. call me bored or whatever that day but I video taped them spawning in a local creek.

The Columbia gets a huge run of lamprey in the summer. Maybe the smaller rivers do as well and these are the offspring headed back down??

Lupo -
What you found was probably the larval from (called an ammocoete). The adult lamprey spawn in the spring much like steelhead. The construct redds (moving the gravel by sucking on the rock and dragging it out of the way) that look much like steelhead redds. The adults die after spawning like salmon.

We have 3 species here in the PNW - the brook, the river and the Pacific. The larval upon hatching move into the slow water areas and bury in the muck were the feed on the detritus, diatoms, algae and other small items. The ammocoetes spend several years in this stage before metamorphosing into the adult stage. It is likely that this is the stage of critter that you found and were probably washed out their muck home.

The adult brook lamprey is the smallest, typically about 6 inches or so. They spend their entire life in the small creeks and do not feed as adults -spawning and dying short after they become adults. Both the river and Pacific lamprey are anadromous fish which migrate to the ocean upon metamorphosing into an adult. In both cases the adults are parasitic and attach themselves to fish and feed on their fluids. The river lamprey adults are typically 12 inches or so long and the Pacific reach 18 inches or so. Historically they were quite numerous and migrated great distances up the rivers (include the upper Columbia). The numbers of river and Pacific lampreys have declined dramatically over the last couple of decades and may become a cnadidate for an ESA listing. While they can't jump they climb over falls and dams by attaching to the obstacle and pulling themselves up.

Probably more than you want to know!

Tight lines
Smalma

Don't all lamreys spawn in fresh water? I know some get pretty big, we caught a sockeye up in the Alberni Inlet several years back that had about a 12" lamprey stuck on it.

Salma:

I recently did a Hell's Canyon tour, and the tour operator said that the indians all the way up the Snake relied on huge runs of lampreys. Apparently few if any make it up that far now. pretty interesting. Anyone try eating them?

Surecatch -
A number of the upper Columbia tribes also relied on lampreys for food. They are amadromous fish the bring with them good amount of fats. As spring spawners they were available to local tribes after a hard winter thus would have been looked forward to as a good change in their diet. Runs to some of those rivers were reported to have number in the 10,000s with few seen today.

Tight lines
Smalma

thank you for all of the information, i had no clue that they existed like that here. it sure is an asset that the board has folks like you, that really know alot about the biology of the watershed.

I remember as a kid seeing thousands of them in the fish ladder at Kalama Falls, stuck all over the walls. I remember catching a few every summer, too, when fishing with eggs.

I haven't seen them like that for years, though.

I did see a few in the Green River (Cowlitz Co.) over the last few years, but only a few.

At the Kalama they were bigger than being described...more like 16" to 24". The ones at the Green were a bit smaller, but pretty big, too.

I also remember seeing little ones, perhaps the larvae, in the Sammamish River and Bear Creek, too.

Fish on...

Todd.

P.S. I never saw one on a fish.

We used to catch tons of them in the Chehalis scoop trap I worked on in the 70's. These were big, many over 2 feet, and it was real disconcerting to have one attach to your hand as you were trying to sort out the salmon smolts for tagging Anyway, having heard how edible they were, even though they look terrible, we naturally had to take some home and smoke them, they were ok but a little chewy, kind of like a cross between octopus and old boot chum when smoked. We did foist them off on a lot of people who thought they were pretty good - until we told them what they were - several had to call Ralph

Smalma, thanks for the great information. You mentioned that River and Pacific lamprey declined dramatically the last couple decades. That is what I see both on rivers with dams and on the coast. I have no explanation of why they declined.

It might be seals are predating more heavily since they do eat lamprey and the decline in lamprey generally conicides with more seals. It also seems seals are an easy scapegoat when in fact they get blamed for many things they don't do.

The juvenile lamprey washed out in the flood says slides and watershed instability might be a problem. It could be a bunch of other habitat things.

Smalma do you or anyone else have an explanation or thoughts on why lamprey declined dramatically?

Fair Hooker -
Interesting question - while there probably is not a clear answer to the lamprey declines I think we can rule out several of the usual suspects.

In spite of Spawnout's early efforts I see or heard of little interest in a bonk season for them. By default we have Wild Lamprey Release (WLR) management. As many lamprey as want to or can are allowed to spawn so they aren't limited by MSY management. So the bios must have the fishery management thing right for them.

Lamprey are one of a handful of native anadromous species where there has not been a hatchery program or basin relocation program. Without a hatchery program hard to blame mis-guided hatchery practices for the decline.

While it would be tempting to blame predators the fact is that they evolved with them and man has not stepped in an attempted to use some of the lamprey's natural productivity for our own use so over the long haul hard too imagine predation being higher today than say 200 years ago.

That leaves us with the last 2 of the usual suspects as the probable cuase(s)-

Poor marine survival - there is some indication that their survival varies much the same as the various salmonid species. On the Oregon they took an accerlated nose-dive in abundance at the same time as the cutthroat coho, etc did.

The other of course is degraded freshwater habitats. They may be even more sensitive to freshwater habitat conditions then steelhead. They are spring/early summer spawners making shallow nests (redds ) in the gravel and have eggs that are not buried but rather fall into the spaces between the rocks. As such they are more vulnerable to high waters. Their young spend a number of years in the freshwater. In British Columbia the Pacific ammocoetes were found to be 5 or 6 year old when they left the river - spending twice as long in the freshwater than steelhead so they are exposed longer to any freshwater survival impacts. The ammocoetes spend their freshwater time buried in the muck found in slow areas so may be vulunerable to flooding and channel changes (both more common in our altered watersheds than historically).

In short their plight seems to indicate the problem is habitat and habitat. In fact as stated in other posts if we are serious about having abundant anadromous fish the focus needs to be on habitat. While hatcheries and harvest play roles the information at hand indicates in the majority of cases habitat issues over shadow them.

For you record seekers - while the average Pacific lamprey may be 18 inches or so long as pointed out by others they do get larger. The biggest one I could find a record of was 30 incher that weight a full pound - fish on!

Tight lines
Smalma

Guys, pay attention to Smalma - he's on to something here, and that would be the three H's are Habitat, Habitat, and Habitat

Smalma

In all the years that I have fished, and guided on the Cowlitz River (18 plus years), I have only seen one lamprey ell in the Cowlitz River. Yet when I have fished in the Green River, (Lewis/Cowlitz County) I have seen lots of ells in that river during the same time period. Since the Green and the Toutle both were heavily affected by the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens, and much of the habitat in both rivers were complexly destroyed. Yet there have been plenty of ells continuing to come back into that river system. So what the heck is going on if habitat is the key that affects their survival?

Why are they not coming back to the Cowlitz?

Cowlitzfisherman

Dont know about the Cowlitz but in the 60's while fishing the N fork siletz we found the river full of dead eels. when we asked the game department about it we were told that they had electocuted the river in an attempt to eradicate them from that system.

Cowlitzfisherman
I don't really know the reason, am not very familar with that system. What is your guess?

For the Cowlitz, it could be that their habitat has been blocked by the dams and the main Cowlitz below the dams is lacking in their habitat needs - likely spawning gravels.

How many lampreys a year are you seeing on the Toutle/Green? A handful, 100s, or 1,000s? As far as that system goes it may have been that unaffected tributaries supplied a refuge from the devastation. As with the steelhead they may have been able to take advantage of the recovering habitats over the last 20 years.

My quick thoughts based on almost no first hand information.

Tight lines
Smalma

come to think of it, i haven't seen lamprey marks on salmon/steelhead i've caught in a long time...used to see one snagged every now and then on the cowlitz. nastly looking buggers, but haven't seen one in years

The habitat was not destroyed on the Toutle system, only temporarily impacted, except of course for the man-made sediment detention dam The habitat on the Cowlitz is pretty much totally destroyed by damming and diking. You have been there 18 years CFM, but I fished it in the 50's when it was still free-flowing, and I remember lots of lampreys along with lots of monster wild steelhead. The Toutle experience was one of the most enlightening events in fisheries management - basically the system was closed to fishing after the eruption and left to it's own devices, and by 1985 there were more wild steelhead in the system than ever recorded prior to the eruption. Then we planted fish, opened it to fishing, and the runs went back down to mediocre at best. Pretty good case for hands-off steelhead management if you ask me. Given the same scenario on our few remaining rivers without dams or significant channel alterations I suspect that wild steelhead would recover in a couple of generations, enough to provide C&R on a limited basis. In a perfect world we would limit hatchery steelhead to dammed and ruined rivers and limit free-flowing rivers to C&R with no competition from hatchery plants. I know which rivers I'd choose to fish on

I have seen them on the sol duc in pretty good numbers in the past.Used to see them just above the honey hole above the Iverson hole They were making reds.I remember being freaked out as one of the locals had just butchered some cattle and dumped there heads in the river.Eels spawning amongst a bunch of rotten cattle head.

I also see them in the spring in the canyon above the gauging station on the s. fork of the skoke.

Spawnout you say;

And then you say;

If that was true, where could they have possibly come from?

I am curious how you have come to that conclusion.

It would seem to be almost impossible for the Toutle to have those kind of numbers of wild steelhead 5 years after the eruption (1985). Since the eruption, and the completion of the sediment dam, there has been like 0 habitats for steelhead to successfully spawn in the main steam Toutle, and another 0 in the entire North Fork of the Toutle. When you look at the picture below that was taken in 1985, you can kind see what I mean!








To this day, the main steam and the North Fork it is still 100% silted in, and only the upper reaches of the South fork and a few tiny feeder creeks has any spawning habitat left for steelhead to even spawn in.

So where in the world did all those "wild" steelhead come from back in 1985?

One must draw the conclusion that any meaningful production of "wild" steelhead must be occurring from the secondary feeder tributaries such as the green. Or maybe all of that "wild" steelhead production that you were talking about that you saw in 1985 was just nothing more then just unmarked hatchery steelhead. If memory serves me, they were not marking the hatchery steelhead in 1980-1990.


This information even further brings into question that any wild natural production was the reason for any such numbers of wild steelhead returning to the Toutle system at that time period:

"More than 150 cross-sections of river channels are surveyed regularly to determine areas of erosion and deposition along rivers draining Mount St. Helens. These repetitive surveys measure bank and channel erosion and channel deposition at specific locations. Repeated aerial photographs also are used to identify sediment sources and sinks. In many places since the 1980 eruptions, channel modifications have been equal to or greater than those resulting directly from the damaging lahars on May 18. Generally, erosion and sediment transport by channel widening and downcutting dominate the upper reaches of the drainage basins, and aggradation and sediment transport dominate the lower reaches"

So do you still believe in what you said when to stated this?
If so, can you explain how a river that has no spawning gravel, has high water temps, and has huge turbidity problems can possibly produce more wild steelhead then it did when it was in almost pristine condition?


Cowlitzfisherman