The fish in question were kokanee salmon fry, recently hatched in Lewis Creek and making their way into Lake Sammamish. The Bellevue-Issaquah chapter of Trout Unlimited, along with other groups and agencies, is on a mission to save these native fish in the lake they've inhabited since the last ice age and restore their numbers to a self-sustaining population. Part of the work is counting the fry as they swim down to the lake and the adult fish as they return to spawn. The photos show the counting trap and some fry swimming in the pen before we gently scooped them out to count them and release them back into the stream. Dedicated TU members do this task three nights a week from 8:30 til midnight or later, for several weeks as the fish emerge and swim to the lake. The trap is lowered into the stream, "fished" for about 45 minutes, fry counted and released, then the process repeats until the count starts dropping, as the fish begin their journey downstream after sunset.
I've seen fry swimming in sheltered areas of rivers but never looked really closely; these tiny creatures, not much bigger than the fir needles floating in the pen with them, already look so much like the fish they'll become. Bright golden eyes, huge compared to the rest of the body, silver bellies, green backs with tiny dark speckles. Some, more recently hatched, still have pink yolk sacs attached to their bodies. Some are visibly more vigorous than others. It's amazing to think of something so tiny swimming straight from a shallow rocky little stream into a huge lake and making its life there, and yet carrying within itself the imprint of this particular place all its life and returning here to spawn.
Lewis Creek runs through a suburb of large lakeside homes; it's narrower than most of the dining rooms in these houses. It feels surreal to be wearing waders and a headlamp, counting tiny little fish, while standing in a thin strip of darkness cut into the land and surrounded by orange-lit streetlamps, glowing windows, and passing headlights. This small hidden piece of wilderness within a thoroughly domesticated landscape is the future of a wild fish striving to live in its native waters.
