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Arctic Char

3K views 13 replies 6 participants last post by  Mylo 
#1 ·
How's it going all?
Great news from the Irish Char Conservation Group! We have redone our website and have a lot of new content.
It is only just freshly baked so you can be amongst the first to see it.

Enjoy
<a href="http://www.charr.org" target="_blank"><!--auto-->http://www.charr.org</a><!--auto-->

Myles
 
#4 ·
Thanks guys, the char in Ireland are under threat and although alot of populations have been lost I think we can save the remaining ones...

And Juro I look forward to the Emerald section too...

Mylo
 
#5 ·
Sunapee and Bluebacks

Tim,

ever throw a line for the sunapee or blubacks? Last year I got some photos of bluebacks from Moosehead Lake from James Prosek (the author guy)which were great. But his were from a netting survey by the Maine Dept of Fish and Game. Any chance I might see some caught on a fly?

Myles
 
#7 ·
Brookies

Terry,

Ah the beautiful brookies...

actually I have never seen one in the flesh. But the photos are awesome. Luis had some great shots in his recent article Brookies of the North. And I have seen em else where on the web.

From what I've read there is a bit of confusion in the char clan regarding who is family and who is related. But I just wish I had a chance to seem some in action (cutts, bulls, brookies, dollys... ) And they have the best names. There are some brook trout waters (introduced) over in Britain but I don't think it would be the same.

The whole char species complex can be daunting from a scientific point of view - at one time there were supposed to 6 species of char in Ireland (not a lot considering there are 4 species in just one lake in Iceland, Tingvallavtn). I understand that brookies and cutts (maybe bull trout?) overlap in range and where the overlap they are more or less the same and the same situation exists for arctic char and dolly vardens in that once you go a certain distance north all dollys arctic char (or is it the otherway around... ?)

So there you go... Confused? I am.

Anyway, anyone caught any of the above recently - got the pics to prove it???

Myles
 
#9 ·
The definition of the Char family in the wils of British Columbia

Initial identification --- Trout,Char,Atlantic Salmon Anal fin 12 or less Rays.

We now split to two different groups
Group 1 Rainbow, cutthroat,Atlantic salmon, Brown trout Steelhead
Group 2 Lake trout, Brook trout, Dolly varden/Bull trout

for what its worth.
saltRon
 
#10 ·
two group split

saltRon are you having me on?

The second group are all char so I will accept that.
But...
Surely you don't group steelheads and rainbows with browns and atlantic salmon? Aren't the steelheads and rainbows native to the pacific coast and browns and atlantic salmon to the atlantic?
But anyway,this is char talk so carry on saltRon.
And the rest of you too. Who's had brook or bull trout or any other char?

Mylo
ps I made reference to cuttroat trout and bulltrout a couple of post back but I now remember that cutts are related to rainbows as saltRon pointed out... doh!
Also for a great read and amazing pics read <!--http--><a href="http://216.71.206.188/articles/aurora2/index.htm" target="_blank">Luis' Aurora Fontinalis</a><!--url-->
 
#11 ·
Mylo, you're on the right track. The char (brookies, arctic, dolly varden, etc.) are all in the Salvelinus family. The Pacific salmon and trout (rainbow/steelhead plus the five Pacific salmon) are Oncorchyncus (and I'm sure I've spelled that wrong. that's why everyone takes the easy way out and abbreviates it to o.mykiss.). Your Atlantic salmon and European brown trout are Salmo.
 
#12 ·
On a related note...

Until very recently (in biological terms) the steelhead and landlocked steelhead [TIC] were <b><i>salmo gairdneri</b></i>. What's in a name?

I am no biologist and only anecdotal experience FWIW and I still believe steelhead/rainbow are not more related to coho and chinook than cutthroat (<b>salmo</b> clarki) and other trout which are indigenous to the same waters.

The re-classification was made based upon protein composition in the flesh ignoring other facts like:

a) don't die after spawning, salmo don't - oncho do.

b) common physical features like a vertical anal fin trailing edge, square tail, etc

c) basically it says that rainbows are pacific salmon because of protein structure

Honestly I guess I don't care how they're classified in text books. Steelhead are the epitome of a <i>trout's</i> potential in the wild.


Check out these Lahontan Cutthroat trout.... <!--http--><a href="http://www.brrc.unr.edu/papers/lct/trout.html" target="_blank"> HERE! </a><!--url-->
 
#13 ·
I agree with you on the reclassification thing. I think croaking or not after the spawn is more indicative of relatedness than protein structure. That still leaves us with three groups, of course: Pacific salmon, "true trout", and char.

Interesting link about those Lahontans. From other reading I recall that the death knell for the big fish in Lake Pyramid was the damming (I think for the logging industry) of their last spawning river. The thing is, people knew what they were doing. There was great attention paid in 1938 to the last big spawning run of 40 lb trout, and then they went and killed the stream knowing that it was the end of those fish.

One of the trout writers, I think Montgomerie, believes that there are strains within a species which have different potentials. So, while there are Lahontan cutthroats, the strain that had the potential to reach 40lbs is gone and no amount of habitat restoration can change that. He feels the same about the Rangely Lakes brook trout, which now never exceed 6 lbs, though they were once common at 10.

This is one of my worries about the way we manage stripers. If we kill all the big fish and then give them permanent irrevocable sanctified no-kill sportfish status, there may still never be big fish again.
 
#14 ·
loss of strains

Good point about the loss of strains, in Ireland we are losing our large spring salmon to the nets, we are now left with few springers and most of them are grilse size (ie few double figure fish)...

There is no hope of the record being broken and specimens are very rare (record=57lbs 1874, specimen=20lbs only two last year)...

The big fish genes have been effectively robbed from the population by thoughtless anglers and short sighted commercial management.

<ho hum>

Myles
 
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