I’m always curious if out of basin hatchery fish are as bad at reproducing as some people clam, how quickly will their negative genetics get weeded out if you quit planting them. One or two generations?

And then overall how quickly will natural selection completely take over and you end up with a run that is completely adapted to the watershed?

It seems that places like the Great Lakes and South American have taken NW hatchery fish and been able to colonize naturally reproducing runs.

So even if all the original genetics of a stream has been extirpated I would think if recolonized and left to their own devices you’d end up with what was essentially a native population after a couple generations. Of course that assumes all our man made issues aren’t wiping them out.