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Lahontan Cutthroat Trout

Nevada’s Summit Lake is home to one of the last self-sustaining populations of Lahontan cutthroat trout. Since 2011, FISHBIO has provided technical assistance for the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe’s fisheries monitoring program for Lahontan cutthroat trout. This includes the installation of a Vaki Riverwatcher automated fish counter to monitor the migration of spawning trout from Summit Lake to Mahogany Creek, and ground-truthing the Riverwatcher’s data with the tribe’s fish trapping program. In an effort to count juvenile Lahontan cutthroat trout migrating from Mahogany Creek to Summit Lake, FISHBIO and the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe designed, fabricated, and tested a prototype underwater video smolt counter known as the Smolt Spy. The Smolt Spy is equipped with motion detection software to only record video when fish are passing near the camera. The Riverwatcher, Smolt Spy, and a PIT tag antenna constitute the tribe’s fisheries monitoring system. In 2016, FISHBO produced an outreach film for the tribe called “Fish of the People: Lahontan Cutthroat Trout at Summit Lake.”


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