Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force
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Habitat Projects in the Satsop River Watershed
Creamer's Spawning & Rearing Channel · Kelly Creek · Satsop Springs · Singer Creek · Unnamed Creek
Creamers Spawning & Rearing Channel Barrier Removal
Creamer’s Spawning and Rearing
Channel is located on the East Fork Satsop River at river mile12.3, just
below Schafer State Park in Mason County. It provides off–channel rearing
and overwintering habitat for juvenile coho, chinook, steelhead, and
cutthroat trout, but is primarily a chum spawning area because of subsurface
flow and low gradient. The channel is over 2500 feet long, constructed
originally by Clarence Creamer, the landowner, and later improved by WDFW.
The goal at the time it was constructed was to increase chum spawning
habitat in the East Fork Satsop. The off-channel spawning areas in this
river are extremely limited. Once the channel was improved by WDFW in 1985,
it supported 2500 chum spawners annually. It continued with high spawner
counts until 1996 when excessive flooding from the East Fork Satsop filled
the channel with gravel, and deposited fine sediments in the last 300 feet.
Reed canary grass grew to block the channel entrance for subsequent fall
spawning seasons and decreased the count of spawners down to between 200 and
400 chum annually.
The project’s goal was to reopen the channel at the lower end to increase
chum access and allow off-channel rearing throughout the year. Gravel in the
lower 1200 feet was excavated to allow fish access to the entire 2400 feet
of channel and promote early access for spawning chum. During mid-October
200 spawning chum had made their way through the grass and over 500 spawners
were outside the channel spawning in the adjoining slough and in the
mainstem-river, where eggs are unlikely to survive. This project increased
chum egg production in the East Fork Satsop to well over 4 million, a
substantial boost for a natural spawning chum population.
The project required an excavator with an operator, a dozer with an operator
and the use of a low ground-impact track dump truck. It took just over 8
days to complete. Once complete, mature natural vegetation was retrieved
from the landowner’s property and planted with an excavator-mounted tree
cone. This advanced the recovery of vegetation by several years.
This type of project was supported by the Conservation Commission’s Limiting
Factors Analysis (Dr. Carol Smith, personal communication). One of the
primary limiting factors for the Satsop and Lower Chehalis basin is the lack
of off-channel spawning and rearing habitat. Project partners were the CBFTF,
Elma Game Club, and Friends of the Chehalis, in cooperation with WDFW and
supported by USFWS.
The Barrier was removed and the channel reconstructed. Prior to the repair the channel supported under 300 spawning Chum. Three years of monitoring has shown the channel supports between 1,500 and 2,000 Chum spawners annually, and provides off-channel rearing for several species of juvenile salmonids throughout the year.
Kelly Creek
Kelly Creek is a tributary to the Middle Fork Satsop River. The correction of an existing 18 inch culvert required a replacement culvert of 6 feet in diameter by 25 feet long. Total time for this project was 12 hours; crews started working at 8:30 AM and were finished up and ready to move to another location by 8:30 PM that evening.
The crews moved a track backhoe in with one dump truck, while the culvert was brought in by contractor on a 16 ft. utility trailer. At the same time as the old culvert was being excavated, the phone and power utility people arrived on site and the crew cut the lines and removed the old pipe. The pipe was able to be saved for one of the landowners on site. New bedding material and the new pipe were installed. The utilities were reconnected within three hours of being disconnected and the new pipe was installed, compacted, armored on both sides with large rock and the road surface was refinished. To finish up the project, grass seed and straw were laid down on the bare earth to reestablish vegetation. The replacement of the culvert blockage on Kelly Creek opened over 2 miles of habitat.
Satsop Springs
The Satsop Springs Project involved the addition of one thousand feet of new spawning channel at the Satsop Springs salmon facility on the Satsop River. The new channel will provide spawning habitat for native Coho and Chinook and prime feeding areas and critical refuge for fry and fingerlings. Using a tracked backhoe to dig an artificial stream bed, old meander lines were followed to create the new channel spawning areas. The two new legs of the channel branch off of the existing 500-foot strip that was built in 1990 and give the facility an additional 1,500 feet of spawning area for $11,500. Although late Coho and Chum heavily utilize the current channel, creating the new stretch allows up to 400 additional pair to spawn. When new channels become filled by fall run-off they will be continuously monitored for overcrowding. If overcrowding occurs during the spawning run additional spawners will be denied access to the channel.
Spawning and over-wintering habitat areas have been lost due to the filling in of beaver ponds, wetlands and swamps. The Satsop Springs habitat project brings the Basin one step closer to replacing these significant missing components. The rearing pond site is operated by the Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force (CBFTF), and is funded by both the CBFTF and the Washington Department of Fisheries and Wildlife (WDFW).
Singer Creek Culvert Replacement
Singer Creek opened up 3.5 miles of habitat by replacing a 5-foot culvert with a 12-foot culvert. It opened 3.5 miles of habitat for Coho and Cutthroat trout. The lower portions below the culvert have had Chum and Chinook. The opening of this has been extremely successful with adults numbering in the hundreds and thousands of juveniles rearing during the spring and summer months.
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Unnamed Creek Culvert Replacement
Unnamed Creek opened up over 4 miles of habitat for Coho, Steelhead, Chinook, Chum, and Cutthroat trout by replacing a 4-foot culvert with a 16-foot diameter pipe. The stream below the culvert is no longer scoured to bedrock. Gravel recruitment from the streambed above the new culvert has provided spawning gravels in this vicinity. Available spawning habitat has increased from the new culvert to the river floodplain, roughly ½ mile. The amount of spawning activity has increased dramatically in the lower portion of the stream as compared to previous years. The culvert appears to be passing good numbers of adult fish upstream. Redds were observed within the culvert. The amount of spawning activity above the new culvert in the 1 mile index reach is greater than the 1 mile reach below the culvert. This barrier removal project is a tremendous success
Unnamed Creek has no official name; however, the locals call it both Metzger and Kohlmeier Creek, after two families that originally settled near this stream.
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