Bonneville cutthroat egg planting this morning

[netboy]

Wife and I went to the Trout Unlimited Bonneville cutthroat egg planting this morning on the Norfork river. TU starting doing this 5 years ago to develop a wild strain of trout in the rivers up here. They get the eggs from Idaho. We buried 75 boxes with 500 eggs in each box this morning in a small side channel of the river.

 

Here's a few pictures...

 

They started with a presentation to Dave Whitlock (fly fishing guru, author and artist) who started the program 5 years ago. Arkansas Game and Fish had a film crew there for an upcoming episode on their TV show.  

 

Next pic are the eggs which they put in plastic boxes with gravel in the bottom. They have to control the temperature to get the eggs within 3 degrees of the river water.

 

Then the plastic boxes are put into wire boxes and surrounded with clean  gravel.

 

Finally the boxes are buried in the river gravel and surrounded by more clean gravel.  

 

There were about 30 TU volunteers there and the county sent a crew of kids from their detention center (aka community service) to help with the heavy work of moving and loading gravel. Also some fantastic support and coordination from the guys at Wapsi in Mountain Home. 

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[netboy]

Forgot to mention that TU did the same planting on June 2 at Rim Shoals on the White river.