In spite of what the winter and summer steelhead smolt release numbers for the Cowlitz have looked like on the WDFW website, I have it on good authority that for at least the past 8-9 years, WDFW (as paid managers for the Cowlitz hatcheries by TPU) has had no real idea how many smolts were actually going out due to hatchery equipment being out of calibration. The equipment now is purportedly functioning correctly.

And we wonder why "back-up" generators don't work at other WDFW hatcheries???