Smalma,

I think you're suggesting that leaving the Skagit open to harvest the few remaining hatchery fish during the usual catch and release fishery might increase the pressure there...as folks who wouldn't normally fish there might if they could possibly harvest a fish.

Were that the case, then I would be open to have my mind changed. I doubt, however, that if there were, say, fifty fish in the entire river system to harvest in March and April that people looking to harvest a fish would actually go there and try to catch them. They'd be better off buying a lottery ticket, as there may not even be fifty in the 120 miles of rivers to fish in that system.

I'll admit that I am assuming no increase in fishing pressure due to the possibility of harvesting a hatchery fish.

This idea is the exact opposite of what is happening on the Columbia...there, very, very few wild fish (relative to the hatchery spring chinook) are being snapped up as bycatch during a fishery targeting hatchery fish, albeit not very successfully.

My scenario on the Skagit would, perhaps naively, actually improve the plight of wild fish by not increasing the impact on them, but actually reducing it by removing the remaining hatchery fish from the river.

Smalma, will you please shoot me an e-mail as I have some stuff to ask you about that I'd like to take off the BB, and my operator error has failed to import my e-mail list from my old computer to my new one. I'd really appreciate it.

Doc, you've just described one of the more interesting aspects of hatchery production. I'm not sure who said it first, but I heard it first from Sinkitip...

Hatchery programs are evaluated by how many juvenile fish they produce, rather than by how many adults return. It's like paying farmers for how many seeds they plant rather than for how many bushels of corn they produce.

That is starting to change, but it is so ingrained in the hatchery mentality that it's dying a long death.

How many of you steelheaders check the last few years' hatchery returns, rather than looking at the last few years' smolt releases ?

Fish on...

Todd.
c_n_r_nates@hotmail.com