DELUGE BRINGS WAVES OF FISH.Byline: Jane Kay San Francisco Examiner The heavy rains driving humans to high ground are bringing waves of salmon, steelhead See RRAS. trout and other fish into San Francisco area creeks and rivers. Three years of wet winters along with creek restoration projects and pollution curbs have produced the best conditions in two decades. Chinook Chinook, indigenous people of North AmericaChinook (shĭn k`, chĭ–), Native American tribe of the Penutian linguistic stock. Altogether twelve main tribes spoke Chinook languages; all were in the Columbia River valley., or Pacific king salmon, are spawning in Walnut and Alameda creeks. Rainbow trout are swimming in Strawberry and Pinole Pinole (pĭnōl`), city (1990 pop. 17,460), Contra Costa co., W Calif., on San Pablo Bay; inc. 1903. Primarily residential, it manufactures concrete and chemicals. creeks, and small striped bass cluster in Berkeley's flatlands in Codornices Creek. In downtown San Jose, an estimated 1,000 chinook salmon have already arrived this season in Guadalupe Guadalupe, city, MexicoGuadalupe (gwäthäl `pā), city (1990 pop. 535,332), Nuevo León state, NE Mexico, on the Santa Catalina River. Its economy is based on agriculture, especially corn, and livestock raising. Creek to spawn in the river bordered by highrises. ``The conditions are getting better because of the rains,'' said Roger Castillo, who's been watching the chinook since 1984 and caught his first Guadalupe chinook in 1992 to prove to his friends that they were there. ``We're seeing the fish rebound from the drought,'' said Carl Wilcox, environmental services supervisor at state Fish and Game in Yountville. Robert Leidy, a wetlands scientist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco, agrees that rainfall over the past three years has benefited both chinook and steelhead. ``The fish are in the Bay in the fall,'' Leidy said. ``When the rain comes, it sends freshwater plumes into the Bay. That attracts the fish to the streams. On Wildcat Creek in Contra Costa County, Ann Riley helped carry buckets full of freshwater rainbow trout to repopulate the stream a decade ago. Two months ago, she helped clear cattails cattail or reed mace, any plant of the genus Typha, perennial herbs found in almost all open marshes. The cattail (also called club rush) has long narrow leaves, sometimes used for weaving chair seats, and a single tall stem bearing two sets of tiny flowers, the male flowers above the female. The pollinated female flowers form the familiar cylindrical spike of fuzzy brown fruits; the male flowers drop off and leave a naked stalk tip. and silt silt, predominantly quartz mineral particles that are between sand size and clay size, i.e., between 1-16 and 1-256 mm ( 1-406 – 1-6502 in.) in diameter. Silt, like clay and sand, is a product of the weathering and decomposition of preexisting rock. Hardened silt forms a sedimentary rock called siltstone, which tends to deposit in thin layers sometimes referred to as flagstone because it is hard, durable, and flat, breaking into nearly rectangular slabs. from the mouth of the creek, giving the fish an avenue out to the Bay. If they make it - and become ocean-going steelhead - it would mark the first time in nearly a century that the creek supported a wild run. ``We just finished restoring the creek in November,'' Riley said. ``It's possible that this would be the first year in 100 years that we might see the return of steelhead. Now that would be pretty exciting.'' |
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