08-26-2009, 07:04 AM
Well i do know for a fact that they are separating the steelhead counts out into a's and b's somewhere, because I've heard some numbers thrown at me for both. But I'm yet to find a site where they are reporting counts as either a or b. I'm not sure if they go by length or what on these counts, but i'm beginning to think that they just go by date, as I know that they say the a runs come Aug 25 or earlier, and the b's come Aug 26 or later. Not sure why they picked this arbitrary date, we all know that this could vary up to 3 weeks one way or the other based on that particular year's run timing.
But to answer your question, there is no real easy way to tell a's from b's on the camera other than lots and lots of watching. They also have a length cutoff for a's vs b's and it's "x" amount of centimeters, but it converts out to be 30.7 inches. The lines on the glass are a real tough rule for judging, because unless a fish is pressed right up against the glass, he will appear much smaller. When you see a frame that is jam packed with fish, you will notice that the "aquarium" or whatever you want to call it must be significantly deep (from the near side of the tank to the far side). This is also a tough time to be discerning something like that because it's a real fish frenzy at Bonne right now. We are having 8400 chinook per day ranging from 3-7 years old (a run steelhead are the equivalent of jack salmon or 3 year olds), 2400 coho per day ranging from 3-5 years old, and upwards of 10000 steelies per day. Most of the coho are the same age/size as a run steelies, and I'm yet to say I can easily tell a difference. If you watch enough tho you'll start to see the differences, but right now b runners are few and far between (only 14% of the total steelhead passage on 8/24 were b's or older).
I also liked that information that Lundman tossed up. you can find that little blurb word for word on the IF&G website I think. It's pretty informative, and is actually the piece of literature that led me to coining some of my own terminology: C run steelhead, and D run steelhead. From what i'm seeing on PIT tag data, steelhead can spend anywhere from 1-4 years in the ocean. The D runners should be the 20+ steelhead, and are very rare. For instance, last year was a year for big steelies, and only 0.4% of the steelhead that crossed Lower Granite were fish that old. However, some people catch 20 pound class steelhead all the time. I guess if you caught 240 steelhead in a year, and were lucky, 1 of them might be a 20 pounder. . . but that would be a pretty good year for me.
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But to answer your question, there is no real easy way to tell a's from b's on the camera other than lots and lots of watching. They also have a length cutoff for a's vs b's and it's "x" amount of centimeters, but it converts out to be 30.7 inches. The lines on the glass are a real tough rule for judging, because unless a fish is pressed right up against the glass, he will appear much smaller. When you see a frame that is jam packed with fish, you will notice that the "aquarium" or whatever you want to call it must be significantly deep (from the near side of the tank to the far side). This is also a tough time to be discerning something like that because it's a real fish frenzy at Bonne right now. We are having 8400 chinook per day ranging from 3-7 years old (a run steelhead are the equivalent of jack salmon or 3 year olds), 2400 coho per day ranging from 3-5 years old, and upwards of 10000 steelies per day. Most of the coho are the same age/size as a run steelies, and I'm yet to say I can easily tell a difference. If you watch enough tho you'll start to see the differences, but right now b runners are few and far between (only 14% of the total steelhead passage on 8/24 were b's or older).
I also liked that information that Lundman tossed up. you can find that little blurb word for word on the IF&G website I think. It's pretty informative, and is actually the piece of literature that led me to coining some of my own terminology: C run steelhead, and D run steelhead. From what i'm seeing on PIT tag data, steelhead can spend anywhere from 1-4 years in the ocean. The D runners should be the 20+ steelhead, and are very rare. For instance, last year was a year for big steelies, and only 0.4% of the steelhead that crossed Lower Granite were fish that old. However, some people catch 20 pound class steelhead all the time. I guess if you caught 240 steelhead in a year, and were lucky, 1 of them might be a 20 pounder. . . but that would be a pretty good year for me.
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