![]() ![]() Since 2011, Allen and his colleagues have relocated 1,758 bull trout into the Clackamas watershed, an ambitious - and, in some quarters, controversial - attempt to re-establish this threatened predator to part of its former range. ![]() “But this is about the right size for a bull trout.”įor the band of researchers canvassing Pinhead Creek, a slim tributary of the Clackamas River, every redd was an auspicious sign. Without narration, the redd would have been invisible. ![]() “Here’s the pit,” Allen said - where the fish had scooped out a soccer ball-sized depression to deposit its eggs - “and here’s the mound,” where it had heaped the displaced gravel. Fish and Wildlife Service, traced its outline in the streambed with a wading pole, like a conductor guiding an orchestra. Chris Allen, a fisheries biologist with the U.S. The struggle, though, only made the discovery of the day’s first redd more rewarding. He sounded more cheerful than the situation seemed to warrant. “Both my feet are soaked,” declared one surveyor, whose boots had sprung leaks. The crew spent that morning straddling downed cedars, crawling through alder, and getting slapped by the glossy palms of rhododendrons. Finding those nests, called redds, was no easy task: The same labyrinth of moss-bound logs that makes Pinhead prime fish habitat also makes it a hellacious obstacle course for humans. On a damp October morning, a troop of wader-clad scientists plunged into Pinhead Creek, an icy Oregon stream around 60 miles southeast of Portland, to search for fish nests. ![]()
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