2017 Spring Creek Redd Count

It was another cold one at the start but warmed up to 43 by 11:00 AM, we stated at the blue bridge at "The Rock" on Rock Road and worked our way down stream to the bridge at Benner Spring's Hatchery, water conditions were better that 2016 with more water and good color. We did not see any redds till about 30-80 yards down stream because of the slow deep nature of this section just below the Fish Comm. concrete dam, we started to see redds as soon as we got to the sections that had 6" to 12" of water and moderate to fast flows, the key is having small gravel for them to work with. this year for some reason most of the redds were on the hatchery side of the stream, we would go good distances without seeing any on the "new path side", When we got to certain areas we would find multiple redds but found only "1" that had a female on it, not sure if our section was post sawn or just getting started- BUT we saw no trout around the redds except that "1". Our total count was "107", a bit more than 2016 and less that 2015 but again there were long sections that were devoid of any redds and the years before we had them in these sections but to be fair the water was up! When we returned to the Spring Creek Park to turn in our results we found that ours was one of the highest numbers reported that day and some teams found "0" redds, a sure sign that the survey was too early in some of the sections, it is true that not all trout are active spawning at the same time but they at least are in the same time frame, I would look for a flurry of activity this week or the next and some of the guys plan on going out again to conduct a resurvey. I did check in on the one really big bed just off Rock Road and it had a few small males darting around the redd but no big female.
   As soon as I get the final results I will post them for you but know Spring Creek is doing well. There is a new parking area just above the "Rock" parking area just up the road to the airport and a really good walking path down along the stream to the Benner Springs bridge but be aware it is a steep last few 100 yards walking back to your car!