Blackjack,

It is true that a native steelhead can spawn with a hatchery fish, but be careful how you define success. Studies on the Deschutes River and the Kalama River have observed that the highest reproductive success, measured as subsequent returning adults, occurs from native X native matings. Native X hatchery matings result in vastly reduced returning adults, and hatchery X hatchery matings in the natural environment result in almost no returning adults.

Wait, there’s even more. Hatchery X hatchery matings of summer run steelhead are somewhat more successful than of winter steelhead. Don’t know why, but I suspect that it is because the hatchery winter runs have been bred to spawn at the wrong time for the natural environment, while the hatchery summer runs spawn more closely to the same time as their native counterparts.

If this news isn’t enough, consider this: hatchery X hatchery matings on the Kalama River produce viable fry and they rear in the wild up to the smolt stage as natural fish might. However, none of them have been documented to survive from the smolt to returning adult stage. This is important. Those HXH matings produced fry that used food and space resources that could have otherwise been available to fry from WXW matings that are known to be successful. The HXH fry can displace the WXW fry because their parents spawn earlier in the season, so the fry are larger sooner, allowing them to out-compete the WXW fry. So the successful spawning, but survival failure, of the HXH matings actually reduces total river system productivity by reducing the amount of food and space available for juveniles from the WXW matings.

The above information is from research reports by ODF&W and WDFW.

As to what a fish is, a native fish is derived from parents indigenous to a river system, all NXN crosses. A wild fish is derived from natural spawning parents, either of native, wild, or hatchery origin. A hatchery fish is derived from, well, hatchery parents that spawn in a bucket, not gravel. A hatchery fish can be a native fish, like in native broodstock programs where native spawners are used to provide fry for artificial rearing. Those are usually called hatchery natives. If those fish subsequently spawn naturally, their progeny are natives, and you cannot detect their hatchery history, although some biologists and geneticists suspect that their resultant survival in the wild is compromised somewhat.

As Native Son said, as you become curious and begin to learn more about the fish you catch, the more you want to learn. Next thing you know, you may become a wild fish environmental activist. And that can be a hard role to play on the OP.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.