Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Inuvik (July 29/02) - An inconnu tagged on the British Columbia side of the Liard River made a surprise appearance more than 1,500 kilometres away in a fisherman's net near Inuvik last month.

Russell Louie, who last month pulled an inconnu from Buster McLeod's nets. The fish turned out to be all the way from British Columbia. - Lynn Lau/NNSL photo

Donald (Buster) McLeod, 73, keeps nets at Barge Lake, off Inuvik's Airport Creek.

Last month, one of his helpers, Russell Louie, brought back something interesting. "I got one weird fish with two stitches in it," McLeod recalls. "When we looked, there was a plastic thing sticking out of it. We put it in the fridge and called Fisheries and Oceans. They said they'd be right down and they were all excited."

A few weeks ago, McLeod received a letter informing him that the fish he caught was from the Fort Nelson area -- one of 19 fish that biologist Jeff Burrows tagged in October 2001.

Burrows, who works for the B.C. fish and wildlife office in Fort St. John, is undertaking one of the first ever studies on B.C. inconnu. He said more work has been done in the NWT, where it was thought there were two separate populations of inconnu -- one that stays in the upper Mackenzie watershed and one that stays in the lower Mackenzie. So he was surprised to learn one of his fish turned up in Inuvik.

"It was completely out of the blue," Burrows says. "It's just one fish and so far, it's the only one, but if more of them show up that have travelled that far, it might indicate that there's a run of Inconnu that aren't limited to either the lower or upper Mackenzie watersheds."

Of 19 fish tagged with radio transmitters, Burrows only managed to locate five shortly after the tagging. With the find in Inuvik, Burrows says the inconnu may have been moving farther and faster than previously thought. "We were tracking through the winter, but we didn't go far enough." His study continues this fall, when another 20 Inconnu will be tagged.

In Inuvik, McLeod will be looking out for the B.C. fish. "They paid us $40 for this one," McLeod says. "I wish they'd all came down to my net."