Ike -
Much of the decision of whether to use local wild brood stock on the Skykomish depends on whether you would consider the traits that characterize Skykomish wild stocks worth keeping or not.

All the work to date with hatchery steelhead spawning in the wild has found that the they are much less productive than a pair of wild fish in producing smolts/adults. It is believed that this is due to the "domestication" of the fish. That is rearing of the fish in a hatchery environment selects for different behaviors than wild rivers. How quickly that occurs is dependent on the length of time in the hatchery (both the number of generations and the length of freshwater rearing). Typically with steelhead the hatchery rearing is compressing two years of freshwater growth into one year. That makes steelhead very sensitive to this "taming" of the wild stock. A successful wild brood stock would increase the survival of an individual female's eggs 50 to 100 times. However the price of that success is subjecting those fish to very different selective pressures than those found in the wild.

One of the real difficult aspects of a wild brood stock is the issue of spawn timing. Most genetists would agree that a successful program should apply equal selective pressure across a population trait. Sticking with the your Skykomish example a successful hatchery program would want to develop equal numbers of smolts from all protions of the spawn timing. On the Skykomish wild spawning begins about this time of the year (mid-March), peaks in late April and continues into June. That means the goal of the program would be to take eggs for 1/2 of the smolts from March to late April spawners and the other 1/2 from late April to June spawners.

It has been determined that successful returns on smolts is dependent on planting of smolts at appropriate sizes in May. In this case about 6/# (about 8 inches long). With modern fish culture methods it is possible to meet that size threshold in only a year of freshwater rearing with the early spawning fish but not with the later spawning fish (having a shorter time to rear the fish). The manager is left with the choice of using only the early fish (those capable of reaching "size" in a year) or going to a 2 year freshwater rearing program (use spwaners across all spawning times).

In short it is nearly impossible to develop a hatchery return from wild brood stock without causing some hatchery selection occurring in even the first generation. For this reason the interaction of the returning hatchery fish with wild fish on the spawning grounds would be a concern. The concerns would be both ones of productive and genetic.

An additional concern with the wild brood stock is the management of fisheries using wild brood stock production. With net fisheries in the "Bolt case area" how does the tribe catch its share without over fishing the wild stock? For a recreation fisheries to access all the returning hatchery production fishing would have to fish all spring - do you want fishing all spring on top of the wild spawning? When wild populations are depressed? There are a number of other management concerns.

The State's wild salmonid polciy (WSP) sets some standards for the amount of hatchery/wild interactions. With different stocks (Chambers verus Skykomish) that interaction is limited to less than 1% (fish spawning at the same time and place) while with similar stocks (an unchanged wild brood stock and wild fish) the standard is 10%. This effectively sets the relative size of the hatchery programs relative to the size the of the wild populations. Using the characteristics of the Chamber's Creek fish, the wild Skykomish steelhead, and assuming that the wild brood stock program can minimize the above concerns my analysis found that a hatchery program using Chambers Creek fish can be several times larger (number of returning adults) than one using a wild brood stock while having the same genetic impacts (meeting the WSP guidelines).

To recap - On the Skykomish using wild brood stock will likley -

1) Brood stock produced fish spawning with wild fish will reduce the productivity of the naturally spawning fish.

2) Brood stock prodcued fish will have genetic impacts on the wild population.

3) Will complicate fisheries management with likely adverse impacts on the wild population.

4) With current policies the number of returning hatchery adults from wild brood stock program will be much smaller than that from Chambers Creek program.

While the above discussion has been neccessarily brief and incompete (see Bob's list) hopefully you can see the flavor of the concerns. The State has determined that on the Skykomish that with a wild brood stock program the negatives outwieght the postivies and it would be detrimental to the wild population.

How much risk to the wild population would you accept for a wild brood stock program?

Tight lines
Smalma