This year’s abundant Sockeye salmon run in the Horsefly River may have been the reason hundreds of visitors participated in the Horsefly Salmon Festival held Saturday and Sunday.
Read more: Sockeye salmon return in droves to Quesnel Lake watershed
“I think we’ve had 300 to 400 people each day,” said organizer and retired biologist Judy Hillaby as the festival began to wind down Sunday afternoon.
“Hank the Bannock man went through 200 bannocks in the first two hours. On day one he ran out by lunch time.”
Hillaby said people arrived and stayed for a few hours, which is what organizers were hoping would happen.
“We tried to get people relaxed and have activities that were appropriate.”
Aside from interactive displays, there was a painting table, face painting, henna tattoos, fresh baking for sale, and live music.
Hillaby was giving a demonstration to a group of children at one of the Fisheries and Oceans tables where there were two fish tanks on display.
One had aquatic life she’d gathered that morning and the other had small fish she’d taken from the Horsefly River.
“Typically they are going to eat these guys,” she said as she pointed to the fish and then to the tank with the aquatic life. “Where we are standing on all this gravel you could call it a garden. This matrix of rocks and water, even if it’s not wet all the time, grows all sorts of things.”
She pulled a rock out from the aquatic life tank and showed the children some aquatic insects that were attached to it.
“They belong to this category of caddisflies,” she explained.
Afterwards, Hillaby chatted with 11-year-old Micah Dyck at the shore of the river.
Pointing to one of the fish she explained it was a female sockeye salmon.
When Micah asked how she could tell, she replied, “that’s a good question.”
“The male over there, is bright red, and he has a bigger hook.”
Bending down to pull in a fish, she showed him how the male was almost completely spawned out by checking underneath closer to the tail end.
“He would have swam over top of the reds that the female has made and then expressed the sperm on top,” Hillaby explained.
When Micah asked her about sea lice, she told him she hadn’t seen any on fish in the Horsefly River.
Robin McCullough, a resource manager with Fisheries and Oceans Canada in the Williams Lake office, dissected two of salmon to show everyone what the insides look like.
“Some of the things on the table were taken from the inside of this female who was taken out of the river after she died,” she told another group of young listeners.
She also had a series of jars with varying amounts of bright red and yellow beads inside of them, to represent the survival from the egg stage all the way up to the when they return as an adult.
Siblings Lana and Austin Van Beers said it was “cool” to see the sockeye.
“You can tell that bears have come because some of the fish are chomped in half,” Lana said.
Hillaby, however, confirmed there were no bear visitors while the festival was taking place.
Many people enjoyed walking on the newly resurfaced salmon walk to access different areas were there were more fish to view.
Read more: Horsefly River salmon walk ready for fall visitors
