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<br />other small reservoirs within the drainages of the Colorado, Gunnison, Dolores, San <br />Juan, and White rivers. In western Colorado, northern pike were first stocked in 1962 <br />by the state wildlife agency in Vallecito Reservoir in the San Juan River drainage near <br />Durango and in Joe Moore Reservoir near the town of Mancos in the Dolores River <br />drainage (Wiltzius 1985). <br /> <br />Wiltzius (1985) in his review of previous gamefish stockings in Colorado, <br />reported only one stocking for northern pike in the Yampa River drainage and that <br />record was inaccurate. Wiltzius (1985) reported that Divide Creek Reservoir received <br />northern pike in 1970 and that this reservoir was in the Yampa River Basin. This was <br />inaccurate because this small reservoir, southwest of Elk Springs, Colorado, is in the <br />White River drainage. Wiltzius (1985) did not report any other records for the Yampa <br />River drainage but records at the CDOW show that 571, 50 to 100 mm long northern <br />pike obtained from Colorado State University were stocked in Elkhead Reservoir by the <br />CDOW in 1977 (P. Martinez, pers. comm.). Presumably, the stocking was to reduce an <br />over-abundance of suckers and fathead minnows (W. Elmblad ,pers. comm.). Elkhead <br />Creek is a Yampa River tributary located about 5 miles upstream of Craig and the <br />reservoir dam is about 4 miles up the tributary (Figure 1). <br /> <br />Northern pike were not collected in the Yampa River by researchers until 1979. <br />Prior to that, northern pike were not reported in stream surveys of the Yampa River in <br />the 1950s (Lemons 1954; Klien 1957) and none were captured during intensive <br />sampling from Steamboat Springs to Lily Park between 1975 and 1978 (Carlson et al. <br /> <br />3 <br />