Konkani Salmon: Life Cycle

Adults Spawning During September and October these are the spawning months and thousands of Konkani's will rush up stream, the same stream that they hatched from. The female will make a nest called a red that can be up to 8 inches deep and 12 inches long, She will then lay her eggs. Any where from 200 to 2000 eggs will be produced by a single female Konkani. Then the male will come along and fertilize the eggs. Then both the male and the female will die. But their bodies decomposing will add nutrition to the stream and help their young grow better.

Eggs/Alevins The eggs will stay in the gravel during the winter months. In February they hatch into alevins. These alevins will not eat because they have a yolk sack that contains all the nutrition that they need to stay healthy until they mature into fry and emerge from the gravel.

Fry As the fry emerge from the gravel and are immediately swept downstream by the current to the rivers mouth and i to the lake, they will eat plankton and other small organisms. They will stay near the lake shore for their first year of life, then they will migrate to the cold deep water.

Silvers The Konkani's will now be called Silvers because of their color. They are a metallic silver color. The silvers will stay in the depths of the lake where the colder temperatures are and there is more plankton, which is the mainstay of the salmons diet. The silvers will stay in the deep water for up to 5 years but on average stay for 4 years then return to spawn in the streams that they were born in.

The cycle starts over Then once again the cycle starts over with the fish that were born in this same creek 5 years earlier. And every year there is a salmon run because when they spawn its not just all one giant group of all the salmon. There are some salmon that come up when they are 3, some when they are 5, not all come up when they are 4. If you look at the salmon count you can tell when the big runs are and from that you can tell when the next big run will occur.

Bibliography -revised.pdf Living Landscapes. Web. 21 Aug California Inland Fisheries Foundation, Inc. Web. 21 Aug "Kokanee on Flickr - Photo Sharing!" Welcome to Flickr - Photo Sharing. Web. 21 Aug Also Information that I learned at Taylor creek wildlife area at Lake Tahoe.