Smalma,

That fish was caught in April of 1997, or maybe 1998...I can't remember.

It's good news that the possibility of a fish like that fish being there this April is much, much lower.

On the concern of hatchery introgression, that's not really much of a concern to me. The studies noted above all pretty much say that cross breeding between wild and hatchery fish rarely produce any viable adult returns. The concern is the loss of productivity of a wild hen if she spawns with a hatchery buck, removing her productivity, or a lot of it, from the gene pool.

Doc,

A few months ago reps from LLTK and the HSRG came and presented their work at a Wild Steelhead Coalition meeting, and it was very interesting.

Integrated vs. segregated hatchery programs is a difficult choice to make. If run properly, both are much better than what we've done over time.

Segregated should have the least likelihood of hatchery/wild integration, but would go against the chances of trying to recover the early returning component of the wild run.

Integrated would spread the fishing out over the season, which would also put more fishermen on the rivers in March in April, putting more pressure on the wild runs. These fish would also have a much higher chance of spawning in the wild, and even if they are closer to the wild fish, they are still hatchery fish. All the discussion above shows what the possible results of that could be.

The key to having segregated runs is not only to separate them temporally, but to have excellent collection facilities to get nearly every fish that doesn't get harvested by fishermen.

If such collection facilities or techniques could be utilized, why couldn't they also be utilized in March and April to catch broodstock from the integrated type of hatchery fish, thereby reducing the chances of those fish spawning in the wild, too?

Fish on...

Todd.