Buck,

I don't know why they don't just plant more smolts, but it probably comes down to cost. Puyallup can only raise so many steelhead smolts, and they are all allocated for release somewhere. Increasing the Deschutes plant means reducing it somewhere else.

Remember, the ocean survival was about 3 times greater in the 70s and 80s, so a given smolt plant produced 3 times as many returning adults then as now. With the present low survival, it would take a lot of smolts to get a fishable run size to return. Where would they come from?

If they build the new hatchery and raise steelhead also, there might be a decent run. But the focus is chinook, from what I've heard.

Marking all hatchery silvers just started a few years ago, so most of the hatchery silvers you saw at Tumwater Falls would have been unmarked in all years until quite recently.

I used to fish the Deschutes when I was a kid, too. But that was probably before you. I only fished for the cutthroat. I didn't know what steelhead were back then. In the 60s in high school, my buddy and I would float an 8' pram from the old Weyerhauser day use park at Military Rd bridge down to the brewery. We thought we were in "A River Runs Through It", but of course that was before the book was even written. It was fun, and the most dangerous thing seemed to be getting the pram hung up on a barb wire fence that stretched across the river, but we managed.

I hope the future of the D includes good fishing for more species. I'll drink to that!

Sincerely,

Salmo g.