Big Bob - Yikes!! The Sol Duc River project sounds interesting and a good way to generate interest in restoring steelhead but you'd better check the male/female ratio for spawning purposes. Your earlier post indicated that "One buck will do a number of hens so we're never short of bucks....".
Nowadays, the standard hatchery practice is to spawn one male for each female. That reduces the chances of poor genetic traits being passed on and maintains genetic diversity.

For example, if by chance you happen to pick a male that has poor genes (low disease resistance, poor homing ability, or whatever) and use it to fertilize several females, those poor genes will be passed to all the progeny, and possibly to the wild populations in the future. Do this across several generations and the result will be decreasing genetic diversity in both wild and hatchery fish. This can lead to decreasing returns to the river. Sound familar? It should since it's happening in alot of places where hatchery fish are a major portion of the run. As a result, Pacific Northwest salmon hatcheries now use a 1:1 ratio of males to females. This maintains the genetic diversity of the progeny almost as well as it would in the wild. But just to be sure, you might check with the WDFW on this.

I'm not implying this project will adversely affect the genetic diversity of the Sol Duc River steelhead but I'm sure the project sponsors don't want to repeat the hatchery mistakes of the past. Particularly when the remedy is so easy: Catch a few more bucks to go along with those hens......



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MSB