Bull Trout Life History, Genetics, Habitat Needs, and Limiting Factors in Central and Northeast Oregon, Annual Report 2001.

Bull trout Salvelinus confluentus exhibit a number of life history strategies. Stream-resident bull trout complete their life cycle in their natal tributaries. Migratory bull trout spawn in tributary streams where juvenile fish usually spend from one to four years before migrating to either a larger river (fluvial) or lake (adfluvial) where they rear before returning to the tributary stream to spawn (Fraley and Shepard 1989). These migratory forms occur where conditions allow movement from spawning locations to downstream waters that provide greater foraging opportunities (Dunham and Rieman 1999). Resident and migratory forms may occur together, and either form can produce resident or migratory offspring (Rieman and McIntyre 1993). The ability to migrate is important to the persistence of local bull trout populations (Rieman and McIntyre 1993). The identification of migratory corridors can help focus habitat protection efforts. Determining the life history form(s) that comprise local populations, the timing of seasonal movements, and the geographic extent of these movements are critical to bull trout protection and recovery efforts. This section describes work accomplished in 2001 that continued to address two objectives of this project. These objectives are (1) determine the distribution of juvenile and adult bull trout and habitats associated with that distribution, and (2) determine fluvial and resident bull trout life history patterns. Completion of these objectives is intended through studies of bull trout in the Grande Ronde, Walla Walla, and John Day basins. These basins were selected because they provide a variety of habitats, from relatively degraded to pristine, and bull trout populations were thought to vary from relatively depressed to robust. In the Grande Ronde and Walla Walla basins, we continued to monitor the movements of bull trout with radio transmitters applied in 1998 (Hemmingsen, Bellerud, Gunckel and Howell 2001) and 1999 (Hemmingsen, Gunckel and Howell 2001). No new radio transmitters were applied to bull trout of the upper John Day River subbasin, Mill Creek (Walla Walla Basin), or the Grande Ronde Basin in 2001. In Mill Creek, we used traps for the fourth consecutive year to obtain data on migrant bull trout. With these traps, we intended to determine the timing of bull trout movements both upstream and downstream, and to determine the relative abundance and size of migrant fish. No traps were operated in the John Day Basin in 2001