Coastal Cutthroat Trout as Sentinels of Lower Mainland Watershed ...

49Table 2. Trends in counts of numbers of outmigrant cutthroat by month at Lake Evafish weir in South East Alaska from 1962 to 1964 and 1995 (from Schmidt 1997).5.2. Status of Lower Mainland Region Stream Stocks in British ColumbiaTrend data on cutthroat trout smolts in the Lower Mainland Region are sparse, and arelimited to a single stream (i.e., Salmon River) over the past several years. Migratory dataon cutthroat trout is available from long-term watershed studies elsewhere on the southcoast of BC. However, very few migrant cutthroat were enumerated, and weredominated by parr rather than smolts. Considerable data on stream fry and parr densitiesand biomasses were collected 20-25 years ago in the Lower Mainland, but populationsampling has not been systematically repeated to establish trends. Hatchery stocking ofcutthroat smolts over the past two decades has been significant, but ecological andgenetic risks of these practices are presently uncertain.5.2.1. Cutthroat Smolt Yields and Adult CountsLong-term (25-30 year) migrant records are available from Carnation Creek and theKeogh River. Although trends in numbers of migrants at both streams have beendownward, migrants are by far dominated by parr rather than smolts. Parr plus smoltmigrants >100 mm ranged from only