After reading Les' remarks, I called him, then I called Curt Kraemer to get the information from the horse's mouth. I then called Les back and got his permission to post a retraction. After the funding crisis of a couple of years ago (if you count them as they go by), the North Puget Sound summer steelhead program is (at least for the time being) funded. The facility at Whitehorse on the North Fork of the Stilly is a rearing facility, not a hatchery. All of the NPS rearing facilities (Palmer-Kanaskat and Tokul Creek as well), incuding Whitehorse, receive their fish from the Reiter Ponds hatchery. This strain of fish can no longer be typified as Skamania fish, but are a rather highly-mongrelized strain, most of the eggs coming from fish netted out of the South Fork of the Skykomish below Sunset Falls. These fish have been naturalized over a good many years and are now showing a lot of variation from their original Skamania parentage; they spawn later and have less tendency to come back as three-salt fish; most returning as one- or two-salts. True, two years ago there were no summer-run smolts released from the Whitehorse facility, but last spring 95,000 were; this is still somewhat down from the usual 120,000-130,000 of past years.

[ 12-03-2001: Message edited by: Preston Singletary ]