You wouldn't let a bunch of schoolkids cross a freeway on their own at the end of the school day. No, you'd want to give them a footbridge, a crossing guard, or even better, a giant waterslide that bypasses the whole thing. And that's just what our weir (pronounced like the word we're) does, except instead of inedible school children, we're dealing with valuable and delicious salmon. And though there isn't a road within 40 miles of the lake, there is a 300 foot waterfall fraught with jagged rocks and lots of dangerous gravity. Yes, nature fouled up and failed to facilitate the lake with an exit for gourmet, red-fleshed salmon, so weir enter stage left.
Weirs have been around for a long time. The first weir was made millenia ago, likely as a public works project to give a job to Cro-Magnon zoologists who would otherwise spend all day fishing, complaining about the current state of donuts, and otherwise a being a bane on society. These archaic weirs were apparently a big hit, because since then some cultures somewhere used them to catch some kind of fish. At least that's what I remember learning in some class at some school I went to. Of course your modern hatchery technician is a gentler, more informed breed than the savage weir fisherman of yore. Our weir offers sage passage to salmon in a gesture of friendship- like a peace pipe or the Statue of Liberty. Of course, it's a trick. When they come back we'll net and kill them by the tens of thousands.
Weirs have been around for a long time. The first weir was made millenia ago, likely as a public works project to give a job to Cro-Magnon zoologists who would otherwise spend all day fishing, complaining about the current state of donuts, and otherwise a being a bane on society. These archaic weirs were apparently a big hit, because since then some cultures somewhere used them to catch some kind of fish. At least that's what I remember learning in some class at some school I went to. Of course your modern hatchery technician is a gentler, more informed breed than the savage weir fisherman of yore. Our weir offers sage passage to salmon in a gesture of friendship- like a peace pipe or the Statue of Liberty. Of course, it's a trick. When they come back we'll net and kill them by the tens of thousands.
Here's a photo of the weir to give you an idea of the modern marvel we're dealing with. The first order of business is of course getting fish to the weir. In the past the salmon (called smolt at this stage in life) were released from pens and allowed to head to the weir on their own volition. But the smolt is not a trustworthy creature. The little cretins do undesirable things, such as getting eaten by trout and lounging around for an extra year, as though they are a bunch of dropouts and stoners and the lake is their parents' basement. At Deer Lake we encourage valor and integrity in our salmon, and in order to instill this, we pump them out of their pens and shoot them through 2/3 of a mile of pipe into the ocean (with the price of gas, air travel is out). Some fish have managed to escape anyway. Last year a hole got torn in a net, ice pushed the surface of the nets under all winter, and recently, as the smolt were at their smoltiest point, a bear chewed the floats of a pen, half sinking it and allowing smolt, those free-thinking hipsters, to swim away into the lake. These rebellious fish are on their own to make it to the weir. I wish them luck, because if they holdover in the lake and get too large, then next year I will have to kill them, look for encysted or free-living worm-like cestodes in their organs, then rip out various bones in their head. I hope they'll make the right decision.
The de-watering box is another key component of the process. At this time take note of the finely hand-crafted wooden covers. I made those. Anyway, this box allows me to control waterflow through the pipes by manipulating a variety of valves, then checking flow, then swearing when I see its improper level, then repeating the process until the desirable level is established. I do this at least twice a day, as recommended by the American Dental Society.
This is the alternative to the weir. As you can see, if you take it you will get to the ocean shortly. At least some of your pieces.
After the de-watering box, it's just a wild ride down those pipes. It takes me back to my youth when Mike Roy and I were the first people ever to ride The Aquazoid, a dark tunnel of a waterslide at Water Country USA. Eventually this zany, madcap adventure must come to an end. Real-life beckons after all, and these slimy little guys are set to become sport fish, commercially harvested food fish, a part of the natural food chain, and lawyers.
Here we see a few smolt heading down the weir. We've dammed up the front of the weir and due to some sort of hydrodynamic principle, maybe even Bernouli's Law or Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the water sucks out of the stream and shoots over the front of the weir real smoothly. I've got in and tried it. It's real fun if you hit that middle channel. If you're stuck on the side like that little guy in the photo it's less fun.
In addition to skirting the waterfall, the weir allows us to collect fish in a pen at the end of the pipe in order to be counted, measured, etc. But mainly it keeps me from being a bane on society for a month or so at a time.
In addition to skirting the waterfall, the weir allows us to collect fish in a pen at the end of the pipe in order to be counted, measured, etc. But mainly it keeps me from being a bane on society for a month or so at a time.
