Superfly, RT, and I floated the upper Nooch before it closed and we saw masses of hatchery fish spawning up there. Now their offspring will technically come back as unclipped fish, but are they considered wild? Yes, but native? Nope.

Good point you brought up, FH5. I've always wondered if the brats spawn with other brats and the nateys spawn with nateys. Gets mind boggling thinking that if there are so many hatchery fish spawning in the rivers, then how do they not spawn with the wild fish? If the brats are not interfering with wild genes, then that's cool. I sincerely hope that they aren't but in the mean time I'm going to do my part by removing those tasty brats from their underwater homes and give them a resting place in my barbeque

I think that in order to establish genetic purity, like that which is contained in truly "wild" steelhead, one must first have genetic coding derived from DNA samples taken from steelhead before any hatchery steelhead were ever introduced to that particular system. Now were talking about close to a hundred years ago on some rivers. First of all, how could biologists of the early 1900's get DNA samples and preserve the data long enough to be matched with modern day "wild" steelhead? Was genetic coding and DNA research even being conducted way back then?

I like to think that there are genetically pure wild steelhead still making their journey up the Sauk every spring. I know there has to be some in there because some of the nates I've got in there have ripped me a new a-hole more times than I can count