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S <br />Immediately after sampling was done on the Gunnison River below <br />Morrow Point Reservoir in August 1973, mackinaw trout (SaZveZinus namay- <br />cush) fingerlings were captured; they had been stocked 2 mo earlier in <br />the reservoir's inlet area. The reservoir, since impoundment in 1968, <br />had been receiving heavy stocking of kokanee salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) <br />and comparatively light stocking of mackinaw trout in an attempt to <br />stunt the kokanee to supply prey for the mackinaw. Some fishermen at <br />Morrow Point also reported taking some coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) <br />which had been stocked in the Gunnison drainage above Blue Mesa Reservoir <br />in the 1969-1972 period. However, gillnet sampling in the reservoir in <br />1973 caught no coho salmon and showed that the game fish abundance was <br />as follows: rainbow trout (SaZmo gairdneri)>brown trout (SaZmo trutta)> <br />kokanee>brook trout (SaZvelinus fontinaZis)>mackinaw trout =cutthroat <br />trout (SaZmo cZarki). Kokanee salmon spawners averaged 20 in. Further- <br />more, in a 2-hr period in December 1973 an average of one 0+ kokanee <br />salmon was observed every 27 sec moving downstream in the tailwaters <br />below Blue Mesa Dam into Morrow Point Reservoir. Many of the kokanee <br />salmon were in distress, unable to swim and sound properly. On one day <br />in December 1974, distressed 0+ kokanee salmon averaging 4.3 in. were <br />so abundant in the swirl area of the Blue Mesa tailwaters that one small <br />minnow seine haul captured 1,219 salmon. <br />The 1973 findings prompted a temporary discontinuance of stocking in <br />Morrow Point Reservoir and raised the question as to whether the rainbow <br />trout in Morrow Point were primarily migrants from tributaries or migrants <br />from Blue Mesa Reservoir. It also opened speculation as to whether the <br />apparently greater numbers of rainbow trout in the river below the <br />Curecanti dams were being provided by catchables being stocked in the