You answered your own question, CF, the studies show that every fish CAUGHT returns $200 to the state. That's $200 if it's a wild fish every time it is caught and released to be caught again. I returned $600 to the state on the same fish in one day before Conversely, that's $50 ONCE if it is a hatchery fish that gets bonked - return to the state minus the cost to produce it. And before you start to argue about what catch is, realize that the sport catch is developed from data collected by samplers, who collect information on fish caught, fish retained, and fish released. This is the data used to characterize the catch and predict harvest, not punch card data, which only characterizes the kill and then not very well as it is well known that this data is innacurate as people cheat - punch cards are just an enforcement tool to try a catch some of the cheaters.

Besides that, wildlife viewing produced a return of $980 million, fishing $854 million, and hunting $350 million to the state in 2001 (Adding It Up, WDFW, December 2002). How much of that wildlife viewing money was spent observing hatchery fish in terminal areas compared to viewing salmon in the wild do you think?

And WDFW spends most of it's annual budget on hatcheries, several times what is spent on habitat - see WDFW's annual report. Ironically, hatchery fish would not survive without habitat - they after all have to spend the majority of their lives in the wild. Clean water, productive rivers and estuaries, and avoidance of fish killing activities like pile driving and dredging during juvenile outmigration are critical to the survival of all fish, wild and hatchery.

Not that I am against hatcheries, mind you, they are essential to ensure continued fishing - even if all wild fish are released all the time the do suffer mortality, and so would not even be able to sustain an all-release fishery. And I bonk and eat plenty of hatchery fish too, although I also release them, especially steelhead unless they are in perfect condition. I have such a surplus of processed fish by the end of salmon season most years that I don't need to keep any - hell, I still have a freezer full of vacpacked spring chinook and sockeye that I am working on - why would I want to eat a worn-out steelhead. Besides, hatchery fish bite over and over too, just not as well as wild fish. Again, for steelhead, catching them is what it is all about for me, and I would imagine for most everyone else.

Breeding a more agressive fish in a domestic environment by means of some kind of genetic manipulation is ludicrous - any fish with agressive tendencies are long gone in a concrete rearing pond - they can't handle the stress and crowding. But the idea of natural conditions for rearing fish has merit, and a study of a natural rearing system is being conducted at the Dungeness hatchery - basically fry are put into a re-created and fenced off stream environment with natural habitat and predators, fed underwater via tubes occasionally but also forced to forage for natural feed, and allowed to grow much as they do in the wild, competing for space and food. It will be interesting to see how the results of returns of these fish to the fishery compare to conventionally reared fish.