Todd

You laid it all out very nicely.

If a wild stock is depleted, there is ZERO reason to mine eggs to feed a hatchery which produces fish for harvest. That makes about as much sense as mass-capturing wild smolts and clipping them just so they can be caught and kept as adults upon their return home.

If a wild stock is doing well, then mining eggs from a few dozen fish to support hatchery production is probably inconsequential to the wild return. That way, managers could create some clip-fin harvest opportunity out of a healthy wild run.

But that begs the bazillion $$$ question. If productivity from naturally spawned fish is superior to hatchery-reared fish, why bother having a hatchery at all? Wouldn't you eventually get a bigger return from all-wild production. Then it would just be a matter of regulating harvest on the all-wild stock to maintain healthy escapements.

Things that make you go HMMM....