South Lake Tahoe home to kokanee salmon spawning grounds

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, CALIF. — The salmon are on the move — and they’re a lot closer to home than you might think.

Hundreds of crimson-hued kokanee salmon are swimming upstream and spawning in Taylor Creek, on the south shore of Lake Tahoe just 10 miles across the border from the Silver State. Averaging just under a pound (although a record 5-pound specimen was caught a few years ago), they’re not as big as their more famous, 25-pound relatives in the Pacific Northwest, and they’re one of the best-kept secrets across the land.

The U.S. Forest Service constructed a viewing area at the Taylor Creek Visitor Center so the public could watch the spawning spectacle, which typically begins in early October. At that point, seasonal rains or the opening of a dam upstream flushes some of the crystal-clear waters of Taylor Creek into Lake Tahoe. The kokanee notice the cooler water flow and actually smell the waters of their birth, and start to head upstream to spawn.

“It’s really cool to watch,” Forest Service visitor assistant Kim Felton said on a crisp afternoon. “Their social behavior is fascinating.” In past years, as many as 80,000 salmon are estimated to have spawned in the creek.

Josh Benin, a resident of South Lake Tahoe, said he visits Taylor Creek about once a week during “the more interesting seasons,” which is everything except mid-summer. He said that in his experience, visitors aren’t surprised that Lake Tahoe has a salmon run; they’re there because they had heard about it.

“When they actually see a bright red fish, they’re surprised,” he said.

And many visitors do more than watch them go by. During the peak season in early spring and late summer, they catch them and take them home to eat or to nearby restaurants for chefs to prepare. The diminutive kokanee have a milder flavor than the better known coho, Alaskan and Scottish salmon typically found in seafood cases across the country.

Fishing is permitted anywhere in Lake Tahoe with either a Nevada or California fishing license. The southwest part of the lake — near Taylor Creek — is the prime area for catching kokanee, although their spawning areas are beginning to spread out a bit.

“In the past, Taylor Creek was pretty much the only spawning stream,” said Sarah Muskopf, an aquatic biologist with the Forest Service. “Now we’re hearing they’re going up the Upper Truckee River and into Incline Creek, which are tributaries. That’s a benefit for the species because you don’t put all your eggs in one basket, no pun intended.”

This season started a bit later than usual, largely because of the lake’s record high temperature and a lack of rain.

“It’s been a warmer fall,” Muskopf said. And so, during the center’s Fall Fish Festival Oct. 1 and 2, and in the weeks shortly after, there were few to be seen.

That all changed last weekend when famine turned to feast, after the rainfalls lowered temperatures and the fish started spawning in greater numbers.

Felton said the creek is an ideal spawning ground for the kokanee because it has a bed of pea-sized gravel. Larger gravel would crush the eggs and a silty soil would suffocate the eggs and the baby fish, which are called fry.

The kokanee have a complex set of behaviors, Felton said. A female will find a spot in the creek and swim in circles, wiggling her body, to create a depression in the stream bed about 6 inches deep. When she finishes, she’ll deposit her eggs, then signal the male, who will disperse a layer of milt over the eggs. The female then covers the eggs. Both fish may move on to repeat the behavior at other spots; females lay an average of 400 eggs, only a small percentage of which survive to adulthood.

After spawning, the kokanee gradually turn white and begin to decompose, ending their one-year life cycle. For the females, that begins within a few days after laying eggs.

“The males have a few more days to stay back and protect the eggs,” Muskopf said.

Felton said the decomposition process — the smell of rotting fish — is a big draw for bears.

In two to four months, the eggs hatch and the fry remain in the gravel with a portion of the egg attached. After two weeks they emerge from the gravel, but stay in the creek for about another month, Muskopf said. During this period, they’re imprinted with the smell of the creek.

“Typically, it’s in April that they’re heading out to the lake,” she said.

Muskopf said kokanee salmon are not native to Lake Tahoe, introduced accidentally in the ’40s. But they’re not an invasive species, and unlike other species that were tried, they thrived in the lake’s extremely cold water and limited food supply.

“Kokanee became a recreational fish that the state (of California) still regularly stocks into Lake Tahoe,” she said.

This fall’s conditions at Taylor Creek support the importance of dispersal of the spawning grounds. Felton said the stream flow had been decreased by a larger-than-normal number of beaver dams. After the rains, she said, employees cut notches in the dams to allow the fish to pass through.

“But there’s a heavy current, so they’re having a hard time getting up there,” she said. “There’s no place for them to stop and rest. The water level is so high, it may be too high for them to spawn.”

The water isn’t expected to drop anytime soon, she said. And the issue is complicated by the fact that snow fell on nearby Mount Tallac.

“If that melts, it’ll continue to bring water down to the creek area,” she said. “It’s very hard to even see them, the water is so swift.” She added that the boardwalk and trail that threads around the creek and through the adjoining marshes is at least half flooded, “which is very unusual.”

Felton, who spends her days introducing the kokanee to visitors, including school groups, noted that each year is different and the numbers of fish streaming through the creek can vary greatly depending on many conditions.

“It’ll be an interesting year, I think,” she said. “We’ll see what happens.”

Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at Hrinella@reviewjournal.com. Find more of her stories at www.reviewjournal.com, and follow @HKRinella on Twitter.