storytemplate

Genesis
This story begins at 7 AM on Friday, May 19, 1972, in the back room of Tom’s Bait and Tackle. It was a perfect spring day, just right for missing work and goin’ fishin’.

“My name is Dell and I’m a fish, a squawfish as most of you call us. I live in a dark world, in the back of Tom’s store, but we get plenty of food and fresh running water. I have hundreds of friends here, all about the same age, just kids. Life is pretty good, but we do have to watch out for the giant net. We never know when it’s coming. It usually catches 8-10 of us and yanks them away. No one has ever come back. SPLASH! Oh no, here it comes again! Crap! It sees me and here it comes, right, left, left, OH NO, I’m caught. I’m scared, I don’t want to go…SPLASH! I’m back in water, I can breathe but it’s tiny and dark. Oh there’s Sam, Barb, Sue, Alex, and a few others I don’t recognize. This world is small, round, and the walls have holes in them. Every so often, all the water disappears through these holes in the wall and this giant ugly thing comes and takes one of us out, then the water comes back in…It’s been a long time now and it’s getting hot and hard to breathe. There are only 7 of us left—the end is near. I’m weak, I’m sure the ugly thing will take me next. Here it comes… what, what, what is happening, the walls with holes are gone, the world is huge, I can breathe, we are FREE.”

It is now 5:00 PM Friday, May 19, 1972, and you have just read how the first pikeminnows were released into Lake Pillsbury by a naive fisherman who dumped his bait into the lake at the end of the day. He was like so many of us at the time, thinking we were extending their lives for a few days. “What’s the worst that could happen? They get a few more days of life in the big lake, but they’ll all be eaten by the bigger fish.” Little did anyone know that the type of minnow being sold for bait would grow and grow and grow.

In just 3 short years Dell and his 6 friends had each grown to 24,” weighing about 6 lbs. They reached sexual maturity and began to reproduce. This small population produced about 1,500 babies a year, of which about 5%, or 75 per year, survived to adulthood. Within the next three years the population had grown to about 225; there was lots of habitat and plenty of food for these fish eaters. As Dell and his extended family started their 6th year the population began to explode, when the 75 fish from their first season’s offspring reached maturity. This age group would produce about 18,000 babies with about 1,000 surviving, and that number would increase every year as another age group reached maturity. By 1982, just 10 years after their introduction, the population would exceed 2 million.

Born-again Pikeminnows

One fateful day Dell and a small group of his friends got too close to Scott Dam and got caught in a strong current that swept them into a long, fast, dark place. Remarkably, they survived the trip through the Dam and found themselves in the Eel River. “This is totally cool—actually, warm,” thought Dell. The river downstream was much warmer and more to his liking. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much food in the river, so they headed further downstream. In a day or two he reached a big pool, calm, deep but also totally void of fish. “What is going on and why are there no fish? And what is that huge sucking machine at the edge of the pond?” There was no way Dell was getting close enough to investigate, so he swam to the downstream edge of the pond and found an old, rotting, leaking excuse for a dam. It wasn’t hard to find a little stream of escaping water, and he went for it. Dell had just gotten past his second dam, the Cape Horn Dam. At the bottom, the water was barely moving at all, and very warm. He didn’t know this, but that large sucking machine back up in the pond was diverting about 95% of the Eel River water into the Russian River. But that is another story.

Whatever they did to remove so much water, the result was to Dell’s and his friends’ liking. “This is absolutely ideal for catching food—there is very little water for our prey to hide in.” Every day dozens more of Dell’s friends made their way through and over the two dams. They organized below Cape Horn Dam and began to spread out. There were no other predators or competition for Dell and his friends, and there was lots of food, as none of them could get upstream past the dam. How lucky could they be, to end up in one of the largest salmon-producing rivers in North America? Four big runs of salmonids were nicely spread throughout the year; summer and winter runs of steelhead trout, and fall and spring runs of salmon. It wasn’t the big fish returning to spawn that were of interest to Dell; he and his friends left those guys alone, as they wanted them to reach their spawning grounds and lay lots of eggs. The fry, when they made their way downstream toward the ocean the next year, were the prime targets. Dell put together a group of 10-15 other pikeminnows to form his hunting pack. They would travel together, lie in wait together, and feast together. Similar packs were scattered along every big hole on the main stem of the Eel. As their numbers grew over the years from a steady supply escaping from Lake Pillsbury and natural population increases, the hunting packs began to spread into more new territory. When the population reached Dos Rios, many decided to head upstream and claim the North and Middle forks for their own, and many continued down the main stem.

In millions of years of evolution, Dell and his friends had inherited hunting and communication skills like no other fish. A hunting pack lies in wait, hidden from the main currents, neatly tucked behind a fallen redwood tree or back in the darkness of an undercut bank. Then silently, but as clear and meaningful as the horn of a passing locomotive, the signal comes from the pack upstream: “Food is on its way.” As soon as the upstream pack began their attack, they released a pheromone that quickly moved downstream and alerted the next waiting pack. No sooner had the surviving baby salmon or steelhead escaped the attack than another was waiting for them around the next bend in the river. And so it went mile after mile, ripple after ripple and pool after pool, one more ambush waiting around each turn. There was no contest here, just slaughter. The salmon or steelhead fry were only about 3-4” long and no match for 12-18” predators with carnivorous teeth and skills honed for millions of years. Dell and each of his friends ate up to 10 fry per day during the migration periods. While the population of salmonids could potentially grow at the same rates as described for the pikeminnow, it couldn’t do this once the predator/prey relation was established in a river. It began to reduce rapidly, spiraling in the wrong direction. Fewer salmonids escaping each year meant fewer fry in three years returning to spawn and so on, almost exactly inverted to the growth pattern of the pikeminnow.

The Dark Ages

Over the next few years, life was good for Dell and his friends; however, his extended family had grown into the millions and hunting wasn’t quite as easy. Even as he and his pack ventured further downstream to find non-crowded water, there just didn’t seem to be as many salmon returning. One day in 1986 Dell came upon another big river joining in, so they headed up the South Fork of the Eel for fresh hunting grounds. Life was good again, but soon the same thing happened. After a few seasons, there wasn’t enough food and there seemed to be large hunting packs around every bend in the river. Scouts were sent downstream to see if there were more productive waters; but alas, when the scouts returned, they told stories of another great river, the Van Duzen, where hunting packs had claimed nearly every bend in that river for 30 miles. Other scouts told of a strange salty taste in the water downstream; it was hard to breathe and the taste was bad, but still hunting packs occupied nearly every available site.
Dell’s pack looked to him for leadership, but more importantly, for food. They were hungry; some of his pack were losing weight or getting sick. Dell began teaching them how to catch frogs, tadpoles, crustaceans and crayfish. They didn’t like these—they were hard to catch and bony, especially the crayfish. Soon there wasn’t even enough bad food. The only fish left in the river were their own young. The pack was hungry and began raiding the young of neighboring packs.
Dell was old, nearly 20 years old. He remembered his early days when he was reborn into Lake Pillsbury. He remembered how he found the Eel and how these were the greatest days; slow-moving warm water, and plenty of fish… Dell decided he wouldn’t eat his own young, he would hunt down the last salmon, but the salmon were gone…the salmon were gone.

It is now April 2006, and the story isn’t over. Dell is dead, but millions of his fish, grandfish and great-grandfish, are still here. Dell died thinking all the salmon were gone. He was wrong, but not by much. There are a still a few hundred left, hardly a match for the millions of pikeminnow. In poor health, skinny and undernourished, pikeminnows still have but one focus, one set of genetic instructions—hunt down and kill salmonids. This is a fictional story, but it is so close to reality.

We at Friends of the Eel River (FOER) and the Pikeminnow Eradication Program (PEP) are committed to protecting the last salmon. We are equally committed to fight for the eradication of the pikeminnow. Watch for upcoming announcements about our 2006 Pikeminnow Derby. We’ll be offering more derbies, for shorter periods with more prizes. Help us protect the last salmon with your support. Send your donation of cash or merchandise to Friends of the Eel River, PO Box 2305, Redway, 95560 (Memo-Pikeminnow or PEP). If you can volunteer a few hours and help us with the Derby, call 923-2146 and leave your name and contact information.

For more information contact:
Bill Thorington
725-3738 or nopike@cox.net