Snap',

That theory has been mulled over for many years now. It has a significant basis except for an important factor - selective evolution takes much much longer to make real behavior gene changes than the few decades that hatchery fish have been around. However, I'm not so sure it hasn't made a slight difference.

We have changed the behavior patterns of hunted deer and elk over the last couple hundred years; but I doubt that's genuine genetic evolution, just more a behavior taught by the parent deer and elk. Hatchery fish can't teach their offspring not to bite, as the mammals can teach their offspring to hide.

As for using hooked 'biters' for hatchery brood stock, that's the trend in Oregon via the many growing brood stock programs; in which trained volunteers catch native steelhead and put them in live wells to take to the hatchery for brood stock. Maybe in addition to keeping planted steelhead to the genetics indigenous to the river better intact, it may also help to breed better biting brats. But I kind of doubt it. The more likely difference is that nates had to bite quickly and often from the fingerling to smolt stage in the rivers and carry that trait back from the ocean again, as compared to hatchery feed fingerling/smolts. But most of us have caught and continue to catch too many brats for me to believe any significant evolution has taken place - yet. My 0.02 opinion.

RT