Grandpa,

Look again. The Big Daddy is the Cowlitz, with over one million steelhead smolts planted. Unfortunately, I think a lot of those smolts don't even make it to Astoria alive, so the "effective" smolt release may be quite a bit smaller. Three years ago, the few wild steelhead returns to the Cowlitz had shown a 3 times higher smolt to adult survival than the hatchery release from the same cohort.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.