I hope I can keep it short and sweet. You basically have 3 types of fish. Lets use the Skykomish as a example. In the Sky you have 1-hatchery clipped fish 2- wild fish, which are dirived from hatchery fish spawning and possibly intermingling with natives 3-native, evolved specificlly for that stream or drainage over the coarse of thousands of years. The problem is when these 3 groups intermingle and spawn succesfully. It is thought that geneticlly inferior hatchery fish dont spawn as well as native fish. For example, a hatchery(skamania)summer run spawns with a wild tolt summer fish. This is weakening the gene pool of a fish that has evolved for running and succesfully spawning in the tolt specificlly. The gray area is with wild fish, how much of its genetic make-up is from inferior hatchery fish? You or I dont know. I do see on the sky though that there has been a middle ground with wild fish. It seems to me many of the wild skamania fish have done well to adapt in a short time frame. Remeber fish with fins intact perfectly probably are much more aware of there surrounding due to the fact they still had to fend for themself from as soon as they hatched, much like a native. Well its late and I'm sure I left some info out I hope you "catch my drift." This whole thread is why many of the SMART hatcheries are now using native brood stock. And thats a whole new topic.

[ 10-18-2001: Message edited by: BK ]