Today I stopped by the hatchery on one of my local rivers and got to talking to one of the workers. We were talking about the lack of winter steelhead and how bad the year has been. After going back and forth about what we thought the causes were, we started talking about the spring chinook run on the river. I didn't know anything about it so I started asking questions. The first thing he told me is that they have been getting back 7 to 10 thousand fish a year to the hatchery. And at their capacity, they can only use about 900,000 eggs, so at an average of 5,000 eggs per female, 360 fish(if it was 50/50 male/female) would replenish the run. I asked him what they did with the extra fish and he said some of them (three thousand last year) are put into trucks and taken upstream so they can naturally spawn. The problem with this, he said, was the fish would turn around and come right back to the hatchery. The other extra fish would be caught and killed and then put back into the river for nutrient enhancement.

Why does this sound funny to me? Even if the hatchery needed 500 fish, there would still be a 6,500 to 9,500 fish excess, why can't we fish for these extra fish that eventually are killed just to be put back into the river? The reason I was told this run is closed to fishing is because it is endangered, how are killing thousands of fish helping this run? Is there anything we can do as sportfisherman to make a change here? I just don't understand why it is legal to kill two hatchery steelhead on a river that never got their escapement this year, and last year got under a hundred fish returning. While we can not fish for the thousands of extra spring kings that will eventually go to waste.

Well Im confused
S W J