About 12,000 baby salmon will return home to the Waitaki River this weekend and a group enhancing the salmon fishery wants people to help celebrate.
The Waitaki Riparian Enhancement Society has set up a salmon enhancement project and sent eggs from salmon harvested from the Hakataramea River to the McKinnon Hatchery on the Rangitata River to be hatched.
This is the first salmon that the society has raised and they will return to races at Bells Pond on the north side of the river about 5cm long. There they will be grown to about 80g to 90g before being released into the Waitaki River in June or July next year.
Society secretary Lin Koevoet said the arrival of the salmon would be celebrated by a public open day at Bells Pond tomorrow, starting at 10am. The salmon will arrive about 11am and be released into the races.
The society was established to enhance the salmon fishery on the Waitaki River. Earlier this year, adult salmon were brought from the Hakataramea River to Welcome Stream on the south side just east of State Highway 1, where a kitset garage was being built as a hatchery.
Some of the salmon next year would be released into Welcome Stream where they would eventually return to spawn, and be stripped of eggs to be hatched on site.
Once hatched, they would be transferred to the races at Bells Pond.
The races, formerly part of a commercial salmon hatchery, have been restored by the society. That included obtaining resource consents (with the help of the Central South Island Fish and Game Council), piping in water, repairing the tail race and installing solar power and automatic feeders. A container on the site will provide storage and work space.
