Laserfiche WebLink
5 <br />An unusual flash flood occurred during the weekend of August 10, 1992, <br />moving much litter, debris, and sediment into Yuma Cove. Upon first <br />discovery of the event, researchers were concerned that the juvenile suckers <br />had perished, but just the opposite happened. The flood waters had positive <br />physical and chemical effects. The backwater temperatures cooled, oxygen <br />levels increased, turbidity greatly increased and reduced algae growth, and <br />most significant, the material flattened the weed beds in the center of the cove <br />which helped the netting effort. Sampling effort three days after the storm <br />event resulted in the capture of 32 juvenile fish, and a total of 115 young <br />suckers were captured during August following the flood event (See Table 1). <br />Pondweed did not reestablish until October, and then it only developed along <br />the shoreline, not in the center of the pond. <br />HARVEST: A decision was made at the NFWG meeting in October to remove <br />the remaining juvenile razorback suckers from Yuma Cove. Fourteen <br />members of the NFWG used a combination of trammel netting and <br />electrofishing to remove 109 suckers during the week of November 23rd. The <br />average size of these fish was 354 mm and all 109 were PIT tagged and <br />stocked into Lake Mohave. Of remarkable significance was the finding of 6 <br />_ ripe males among these juveniles. This is the earliest age ever recorded for <br />razorback suckers reaching sexual maturity. These males were tuberculate <br />and expressing milt. Following this effort, the organic respiratory fish <br />toxicant rotenone was applied to the backwater. Five additional suckers were <br />collected by this technique. Three were revived and released (included in the <br />109), and two fish perished and were transferred to ASU laboratory for <br />genetic analyses. <br />The total harvest of juveniles from Yuma Cove to 296. ASU examined the <br />total production of Yuma Cove (Appendix D). The two most noteworthy <br />observations are that genetic investigations showed at least ten of the 29 <br />females originally selected produced young in Yuma Cove. Second, the overall <br />growth was phenomenal, but the level of production is extremely low. If the <br />NFWG is truly going to attain the goal of replacing the existing 60,000 adults, <br />the effort needs to be greatly expanded.