![]() ![]() But when you go to the bottom of the fish ladder at 11 o’clock at night, the walls are covered with lampreys trying to get up this fish ladder,” said Stewart Reid, a private freshwater fish biologist. “When you go to the ladder in the daytime, you might see an occasional lamprey hanging on the wall. ![]() ![]() And in this David-meets-Goliath scenario, the little guy doesn’t make it. The adult Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus tridentata), largest of the six species native to California, grows about 2 feet long. It was a disregard more egregious here than anywhere in the lampreys’ long range along the Pacific Northwest because the river is actually named after lampreys, which early European settlers mistook for eels. Unfortunately, from the beginning it also overlooked, and not in the scenic way, the needs of the lamprey, a much-maligned fish that also needs access to the Eel’s headwaters and unlike its salmonid cousins can’t swim up a ladder. The station overlooks a fish ladder, built as part of the agreement to allow construction of the Scott Dam, which allows fish like salmon and trout to travel upriver to spawn. To its side is the oldest fish counting station in California, the Van Arsdale Fisheries Station, run by the California Department of Fish and Game since 1922. Though it’s the smaller of the two dams on the Eel, the Cape Horn Dam is still over 90 feet high. Much of its diverted water ends up in another river entirely, forced south through a series of aqueducts and canals and power turbines to the East Fork Russian River. Part of the Potter Valley hydro-electricity project along with the Scott Dam 11 miles further upstream, the project stores winter run-off from the Eel River basin for drinking water and power generation. About 140 miles north of San Francisco, the dam was built in 1907 and blocks the waters of the Eel to form the Van Arsdale Reservoir. ![]() Cape Horn is a concrete and earth-filled dam on the upper Eel River in Mendocino County. ![]()
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