Jim, you've hit a bit of a hot button for me.

In some cases, Washington Trout, and other groups, are working to change the hatchery program. I don't think they are doing this simply because they hate hatchery fish or the people that fish for them. They are doing it because they love trout and salmon, and they believe that the hatchery programs are killing them. Based on the information I have seen in their newsletter (I am a member) these are in cases where they believe the hatchery in question is ill advised. Usually this is because there is a wild run in the river that the hatchery fish are impacting, and the data is there to support a belief that the wild run could recover if given any sort of a chance.

It's pretty easy to see that hatchery programs are not a slam dunk way to make fish come back to the rivers. A river I grew up on, the Washougal, has had a hatchery program since I was a kid. When I was a kid, however, it also had a strong wild run. In the last 30 years, the wild run has been allowed to to be fished into nothing. We just didn't know any better, and we believed what we were told, that the hatchery fish would replace the wild fish.

Well, guess what? The hatchery fish didn't replace the wild fish. WDFW planted more and more fish, and got fewer fish back. The fish that did come back shot up to the hatchery, which is in closed water, and didn't give us a chance at them. WDFW spent more and more money, and we caught fewer and fewer fish. Catch stats in the Washougal are still in a long term decline. When I was a kid, you expected to catch your limit, and the limit was three. Now, you're lucky to hit fish, and two fish is a darn good day. The fish that do come back come through in a rush, in a two week period. In the old days we fished from December through March, and expected to hit fish the whole time.

Another fun fact: about 3 to 5% of wild fish that are hatched will return to spawn. Hatcheries have been struggling to get a half percent of fish spawned to return. Hatchery fish are weak. Even if we plant fish, most of them die.

The overall returns are weak, as well. How many times in recent years have we heard that the hatcheries are struggling to get enough eggs?

The WDFW and the departments in other states have a pretty spotty record in managing hatcheries and their impact on rivers. In many states, including Washington, they have knowing planted diseased fish from hatcheries into rivers that were previously healthy. This has resulted in severe damage to rivers in the Olympic peninsula (IHD), and most of the rivers in Montana and Colorado, (whirling disease) for instance.

So it's not clear to me that hatcheries work. I'd love to be wrong on this. But I don't think I am.

It is clear, however, that wild fish work. If we let them.

The folks I have met in Washington Trout have been knowledgable about their cause, and their positions are fact based. You may disagree with them, but they have done their homework. They've done great work in habitat restoration, and lobbying for wild fish release. These are steps that will improve our fishing in the future. It's not clear that hatcheries have the same beneficial effect, and more important, hatcheries are much more expensive, in terms of fish created, than these restorative efforts are.

That last bit provides the clincher for me, when choosing between wild fish and hatchery fish. It's this: Hatcheries can get shut down when budgets get tight. Oregon just closed three of them, because there was no money. If you depend on hatchery fish for your fishing, then you have to make sure that the money is there to run them. When the state government has to choose between paying for medicine for welfare kids and fish for recreational fishing, guess which loses? Don't bother making noise about how you pay for your license, that's not how it works, The moeny all goes into the same pocket, and we've been voting to cut the taxes for too many years now.

I'd love to have hatcheries supplement our runs. If they work. I think the folks at WDFW are doing their best to make them work, and I support them. I think they're getting better at it, and I think that's great. However, I look carefully at what they tell me, because these folks will lose their jobs if the hatcheries are shut down. Even if they believed that the hatcheries didn't work, they'd have to be pretty brave to say so, because it would likely mean that they would have to find new work. And there aren't a whole lot of jobs for fisheries folks these days.

So, my friends, I ask that you think about it before you bash Washington Trout. These guys all fish, and they're no dumber than you and I are. They're on our side, and if they're taking these steps, there's a reason for it. Might be right or wrong, but if nothing else, they are dead sincere in their desire to save our fish, and ultimately our fishing. I urge you to check out their website and try to see their side before kicking them.

And if you think they're right, give them 10 bucks to help them continue the effort.