On the swing,

Thanks for your thoughtful post I was a participant on the Satsop broodstock collection project (20?) years ago. It seemed to me to be successful, but I have no idea of the numbers. Many years ago, in the mid 70's, I saw a remarkable rebuilding of the spring chinook run on the Kalama due to a change in hatchery rearing. John Clayton was the genius hatchery manager at Kalama Falls. He floated sheets of plywood on the raceways to give the juveniles a place to escape. Then he didn't let the employees step up to the ponds to feed, but kept them back at a distance so that the hatchery springers wouldn't get trained. Fish were fed at different times. This created a more natural condition, I think, and must have led to a higher survival rate. Over one cycle the run went from a few hundred to several thousand. I've wondered over the years why practices similar to that weren't adopted. It would seem to me that the more we mimic nature the more successful we would be.