March 12th, 2022 - Millennium Creek

The trout are growing and becoming better swimmers as the first month after

emergence from the spawning gravel

beds, on Millennium Creek.

This is a close up of the trout in the photo below. The surface distortion played a role in my personal preferrence for baby trout photos.

A young Millennium Creek brook trout finds security under an overhead downed  limb, where the shade keepes the tiny trout hidden from the birds above.

The trout fry can stay motionless on the bottom detritis and they are very hard to spot some times, they are only a few centimeters in length at this time.

There are many predators about, including insects like diving beetles and dragonfly nymphs, all of which can find an easy meal in the tiny trout on Millennium Creek. Other larger trout of the same species such as the brook trout in Millennium Creek, all will eat their smaller cousins, maybe even their own spawned trout, but this is hard to determine, but juvenile trout have turned up in stomach samples, so this should answer the question, which I didn't add to the FAQ section to the right. 

The small parr marks on the sides of the trout make them  easy to distinguish from other small minnows, like dace, chub, stickleback minnows and so on.

However, there are trout perch about in the Jumpingpound Creek, and they too have parr marks. Juvenile mountain whitefish also have parr marks during their first and second year, but most their first. They do grown fast.

The Athabasca rainbow trout, which are native to northern Alberta, have their parr marks for the full life span. These rainbows never get that big, as far as I know anyway, I did catch a lot of them in the Hinton area.

When do the tiny trout disperse downstream or upstream to new habitats?

Answer:  As soon as they feel comfortable enough in their own swimming abilities and some hard lessons learned will prompt them to move on to new home territory.

How long do they carry the parr marks on their sides?

Answer: Some trout loose their parr marks earlier than others, it may have something to do with the environment that they choose to live in. Most trout will retain the marks for the first few years of their lives, and then the marks begin to fade.

When do the small trout move into faster water habitats?

Answer: When they find an available habitat in faster flowing water, the trout need the calmer water of lateral margin habitats for growth in their early months of life.