I think folks are offering a wide ranging, and healthy perspective on the issue of hatchery fish. As with many things in this business, there are no simple answers, no silver bullets.

Hatchery steelhead are perhaps the most notorious group of "wanderers" out there. But let us be clear... there is a huge difference between "straying" and "dipping in." Dipping in can mean a fish entering a river that is not its "home" and swimming upstream one mile or many miles. These fish are not destined to spawn there. However, they often get caught in nets and by hooks and, if a tag is recovered, the data will indicate the river of capture was not the home stream. This does not mean the fish strayed... necissarily. Most often this fish would be considered a "dip in."

This is not to say there are not strays. Some tags are recovered from spawned out fish in a river that the fish was not born and released from. This is a true stray. Both wild and hatchery fish stray. In nature, the tendency for a small portion of a return to spawn in a stream other than the home stream, is necessary for "colonization" purposes.

Hatchery steelhead spawning in the wild are not know to have much reproductive success. Most hatchery winter steelhead programs are timed so the adults are spawning much earlier than the wild fish... at a most unhospitable time of year. This is not to say that managers ignore the issue of hatchery fish spawning in the wild... either the home stream or in a stream where the fish has strayed. State and Tribal hatcheries now operate under Hatchery Genetic Management Plans. Most HGMPs for hatchery steelhead programs address these and other concerns.

As for errors in coded wire tagging, this is extremely rare this day and age. So much time, energy and money is spent putting tags into fish (hatchery AND wild) that the checks and balances and quality control structures VERY rarley let a "wrong" code slip through the system.