Fifteen percent or less would be a more likely figure, although the numbers vary considerably from river to river. Those who survive are almost always hens, who head back downstream as soon as they've taken care of business, while the bucks hang around the redds, looking for another likely hen and fighting with each other. Some fish may survive to spawn as many as four times, though I seem to recall a reference to a hen who returned to a California hatchery for seven successive seasons. Among wild fish, repeat spawners are very important to the survival of the species because they produce far more eggs for a given body weight than first-time spawners and, while numerically inferior, may account for as much as twenty-five percent of the total of all of the eggs laid. By the way, fish that are returning for a second or third time are rarely any larger than at their first spawning. A year spent in the ocean is only about enough to return the fish to its original condition. The largest steelhead are those who spend three or more years in the ocean before returning to spawn for the first time.