Endangered fish has best spawning run on record

Tuesday, May 26, 1998 | 9:04 a.m.

This is the largest run since the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation built a dam and fish-handling facility along the river at Marble Bluff 22 years ago.

Last year, 307,000 fish moved through the area. The bureau has made improvements since then to let the fish move even more quickly.

"It's working as designed," U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Fisheries Biologist Lisa Heki said.

The run began April 6 with a handful of fish moving upstream in search of fresh water to lay their eggs. Two weekends ago, the number was up to 65,000 in one warm spring day. The recent chilly weather has caused the numbers to drop off.

The cui-ui, revered by the Pyramid Lake Paiutes, live in Pyramid Lake and have been associated with prehistoric Lake Lahontan for more than 2 million years.

The females can produce 25,000 to 186,000 eggs. Once they are laid and fertilized, it takes 3-4 weeks for the larvae to hatch, then drift back down the river to the lake.

In previous years, the fish had to use a 3-mile-long fish ladder to reach the Truckee and that tended to discourage some of the older, more fertile, females, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported on Monday.

This year, there is so much water in the Truckee that the bureau didn't even open the ladder. It also has installed a cage-like elevator that can give as many as 3,500 fish at a time a free ride, filling the lock with water to climb a 40-foot shaft.

The government built the dam in 1976 to stop the river from eroding its banks and intruding toward Nixon as a result of the diversion of Truckee River water to the Newlands Reclamation Project.