Unclipped hatchery coho on the Columbia is part of a deal with tribes related to harvest allocation issues. I believe the emphasis is on increased harvest opportunity for tribes, minimizing harm to depressed populations, and directly benefiting native or wild populations has the lowest priority. I'm not familiar with the program so can offer no informed judgement.

There are practical reasons for not marking the hatchery coho that are stocked in the upper Cowlitz River and for requiring their release should you catch one. The upper Cowlitz program is a restoration program. There are no wild fish readily available as broodstock. The hatchery population is declared to be native according to WDFW, and is considered the best stock for the restoration program.

Until unmarked adults began returning, unmarked hatchery fry were stocked in upper river tributaries. It costs more to mark the fry than they are worth for one thing, and it's unnecessary and counter-productive to a good restoration program. The only hatchery fry that survive are the ones that grow to smolt in the best and most productive natural habitat, just like wild coho would do if they hadn't been extirpated.

Those that make it back to the Cowlitz are more like wild natives than the ones reared and released at the hatchery. While TPU hauled more than 70,000 adults to the upper basin, only about 4,000 were "wild", that is, adults that resulted from the fry plants two and a half years previous. Those 4,000 wild spawners are more productive than the surplus hatchery fish that are trucked up there. The hatchery surplus help seed the basin, no doubt, but not as effectively as the naturally reared fish. But at least they contribute a lot of marine derived nutrients to fertilize the watershed.

For example, during the December rains, many of the hatchery surplus coho that became sexually mature swam up tributaries not suited to spawning. These creeks dried up, or nearly so, shortly after it stopped raining, and the eggs of those fish are lost to producition. The 4,000 wild coho know from their juvenile rearing experience where the suitable habitat is, and they disperse and spawn where it will do the most good. Most of the hatchery fish follow them and disperse to spawn more effectively as well. Of course, the pied piper effect works both ways, and a few wild fish followed hatchery fish into creeks that dried up, but mostly it is the other way around, so the overall benefit is positive.

There are distinct benefits to having truly wild, or naturally produced, coho in the Cowlitz. They are vastly outnumbered by marked hatchery coho. And if we all learn to fish jigs as good as CFM, we can still catch a limit and release the unmarked wild ones to go do what they do best - spawn in the natural environment. Given the benefit of having wild coho in the system, I just don't see the downside that others describe. Who among us admits to being such a lousy angler that we need to kill every coho we catch? Heck, I'm probably one of the worst when it comes to catching coho, but I don't need to eat a wild one.

Regarding the ultimate success of the coho restoration, there most likely will be harvestable wild coho produced from the Cowlitz. The problem is that the recreational fishery will still have to release the unmarked wild fish, because any surplus production will have been harvested by the Columbia River gillnet fishery. As long as the lower Columbia River gillnet fishery continues, restoration of chinook, coho, and steelhead continue to be at much higher risk of failure because the gillnet fishery depends on harvest rates that natural fish production cannot sustain. Shutting that wastefull, unnecessary, and counter-productive fishery down is a necessary prerequisite to restoring sustainable wild salmon and steelhead fisheries on the lower Columbia.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.