Stocking out Gilas on Little Creek

The annual Gila Trout Recovery Team meeting was held on December 17^th in Albuquerque. This is a meeting where all the agencies and NGOs that work on Gila trout gather to review the work of past year, and the work plan for the next yer is laid out. There were several interesting items that came out of this year’s meeting that I’d like to share with you.

Regarding restoration efforts on the core conservation populations, the biggest project over the past several years has been the recovery of the West Fork Gila River complex. It appears that this project will finally be completed in 2010. A crew will go up in early spring to insure the stream is clean of invasive trout, and then the stream will be stocked this summer. While this doesn’t mean much to fishermen, it is an important project to secure the viability of the species.

As for the recreational opportunities for fishermen, the opportunities have been steadily expanding over the last couple years, and they will continue to grow. This year, it appears the Little Creek will be opened to fishing (check the 2010 fishing proclamation when it comes out for season and regulations). In addition, the hatchery production from Mora has been good enough that recreational stockings of Gilas has been very good and looks to be good again in 2010. These fish are stocked out into the Forks area, Black Canyon, Willow, Gilita, and Sapello Creeks.

A very exciting development has been the recovery of a couple streams in Arizona, which will add to the recreational opportunities in a couple years. 3.5 miles of Frye Creek, which drains off Mount Graham and the Pinaleno range, were stocked with fish in 2009. This creek was previously fish-less due to wildfire. If all goes according to plan, in the future the Pinalenos will offer fishermen an opportunity to catch both Gila and Apache trout.

A second Arizona stream, Grapevine Creek in the Prescott National Forest was also stocked with Gilas. This is a smaller stream and fishing opportunities will likely be somewhat limited. For some unknown reason, this stream was also fishless. There are plans to add Gilas to a couple more streams in Arizona in the coming years.

For upcoming conservation recovery efforts, the agencies are looking at McKenna, Sacaton and Little Turkey creeks for restoration in the future. Work still needs to be done on the barrier on Black Canyon, and stimulus funds were secured to fix this barrier at the road crossing.

The NEPA compliance work that Trout Unlimited received a CFRP grant for is now under way. This NEPA is for the approval of controlled burns in the Aldo Leopold and Gila Wilderness areas. The purpose of the burns is to reduce fuel loads and limit the damage caused to Gila trout populations from crowning wildfires.

We are still trying to get a southern New Mexico TU chapter going to help work on Gila trout projects. Look for an organizational meeting some time in January or February.

Let’s hope 2010 is as good a year for the Gila trout as 2009 was.

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