SILVERDALE – Like some kind of fishy celebrity, the silvery wild chinook salmon was a magnet for the dozens of people gathered at Dyes Inlet near the mouth of Clear Creek for a weekend beach seine.
The fish was in a narrow clear plastic display case filled with water, easily visible as the case was carried by Central Kitsap High School student Emily Soth. She walked from person-to-person to show them the fish.
The chinook shared its small temporary home with a herring. The two fish moved their mouths open and closed as people gawked at them.
The Clear Creek Trail group sponsored the Sept. 26 event, held on the beach near Old Mill Park on Bucklin Hill Road.
Event organizer Paul Dorn and Kitsap Sailing and Rowing club member Steve Trunkey slowly motored out in the water with a 100-foot-long net. They deployed the net just off the shore in a large semicircle. When deployed, two groups on the shore pulled the net toward the shore to catch the fish.
“It’s a beautiful day for a beach seine,” said Jill Wetzel, who is a salmon recovery intern working for Dorn.
“The cold water makes it easier to breath,” Wetzel said, because it can hold more oxygen.
She said the overcast skies made it harder for the fish to see people, and thus they wouldn’t swim away from the people. It would be even better fish-catching weather if it were windy, she said – it was dead calm at the event – because then the waves would further obscure the fish’s view of potential predators.
The catch included the chinook, the herring, several sculpins and crabs and other critters.
On the beach, the creatures were dumped from the net and into buckets of water, including a small children’s blue swimming pool, for viewing.
The chinook was checked with an electronic device to see if it had been raised and tagged at a hatchery – it hadn’t. That meant it was wild, and a good sign of the quality of salmon habitat in the area.
Salmon feed on the other forage fish.
“The name of the game is get big fast,” Wetzel said of the salmon. The game is to grow, reproduce and die.
Terrestrial insects such as sand fleas are an important part of the fish’s diets. Other insects drop into the water from shoreline plants, where they are then fish food.
Jon Day, a retired biology teacher and marine science teacher, worked with Wetzel. He pointed to a line of trees and plants on a nearby shore. He said that because the trees were right next to the water, many insects would drop in. The trees also shade the water.
“That’s a perfect environment” for salmon, Day said.
Emily Soth, left, shows a herring and chinoook to Gabriella and Katrina Noble.
Jill Wetzler, center, points at Dyes Inlet while talking about the life cycle of salmon Sept. 26.
People pull on a rope to pull a net toward the shore during the seine.
Jon Day shows a chinook and a herring that were caught during the seine.
A chinook is checked for the presence of a tag. It was not tagged.
