Ebright Creek kokanee

Lake Sammamish kokanee leave the streams where they hatch and spend three or four years in the lake before the adults come back in late autumn to spawn in those same streams [1]. The city of Sammamish belongs to the Lake Sammamish Kokanee Work Group, which has worked on the native kokanee population in the lake [1]. A large part of the local turnaround traces to getting the fish back into spawning water, and Ebright Creek and Zackuse Creek are the streams named [1]. Sammamish Public Works replaced the culverts carrying those streams under East Lake Sammamish Parkway, and taking out those barriers opened upstream spawning habitat that the returning fish could not reach before [1]. Once that water was open, the official counts of returning kokanee came in at more than 8,000 fish, the highest in almost ten years, against an average of under 400 over the past eight years [1]. Residents also gave hours to the Kokanee Work Group, Trout Unlimited, the Snoqualmie Tribe and other organizations during this run, counting fish, tending remote egg incubators, releasing hatchery fry and helping with restoration work across the watershed [1].