A fishy day on the Mokelumne River
Heritage fifth-graders get first-hand lesson in salmon life
Fifth-grade students from Heritage Elementary School crowded around a large bucket. Behind them, water from Camanche Reservoir rushed into the Mokelumne River and downstream, but the students weren’t looking at the river. Their eyes were on the bucket.
They were trying to count how many little salmon fry were swimming around in the bucket.
“We keep telling them to hold still, but they won’t,” teacher Janine Jacinto joked.
The students had received a few dozen salmon eggs 31 days earlier. A tank on loan from the Delta Fly Fishers housed the eggs until they hatched and the little salmon grew to “fry,” or juvenile, stage.
Now, the students were saying goodbye to their scaled friends.
First, they found a quiet area along the edge of the river, shady and protected from the fast flows from Camanche. Then, a few students grabbed some trash that littered the river’s edge and ran back to the dumpster in the parking lot.
Finally, it was time for the little fish to enter their new home.
Kathy Grant, watershed education program coordinator for the City of Lodi, and Jacinto picked up the buckets. The kids crowded around.
“They’re doing it! They’re doing it!”
“I can’t see!” “I’m too short!” Soon, the salmon were swimming away, but the students had little time to miss their fish. They were headed on a quick hike up to the Mokelumne River Fish Hatchery.
At the hatchery, they met manager Darrick Baker. He quizzed the kids on the salmon life cycle — “You guys did your research,” he said when they knew most of the answers.
Salmon prefer to lay their eggs in their home stream, Baker said. In California, where dams have made it difficult for them to get “back home,” fish ladders open up a route.
That doesn’t mean they won’t lay their eggs anywhere else, though. Sometimes, if the flows from one area are strong, the faster, cooler water leads more salmon up that river instead, Baker said.
“How many chinook salmon do you think we’ve raised at this facility?” he asked the students.
They guessed 100,000. Then 500,000. Then 1 million.
Finally, Baker gave them the answer: The Mokelumne River Fish Hatchery raises 5 million salmon every year.
The baby salmon raised there are released downstream, where they head for the ocean. They’ll spend six to eight months in the estuaries — brackish water in the California Delta — and then head out to sea. The salmon from the Mokelumne head to ocean waters off Washington, British Columbia and Alaska.
They return to the Mokelumne when they’re ready to reproduce.
After the quick lesson, Baker led the students on a tour of the tanks that held salmon, steelhead and rainbow trout — about 15,000 fish each.
The kids were able to feed some hungry fish.
Though Lodi students have visited the hatchery before, this is the first year Jacinto’s class has helped raise fish to add to the river.
In order to raise salmon in the classroom, teachers must attend a workshop conducted by the Department of Fish and Wildlife held at the San Joaquin County Office of Education.
“I went to the training, and then we got the salmon eggs,” Jacinto said.
The tank was provided by the Delta Fly Fishers. The group enjoys helping classes throughout Lodi and Stockton learn more about fish.
“We’re trying to increase the number of tanks every year,” member Jerry Neuburger said.
Teachers who are interested in the program can contact Neuburger at
gneuburg@gmail.com for information about working with the Delta Fly Fishers, or Connie Bock at
cbock@sjcoe.net for information about training at the San Joaquin County Office of Education.