Fun5Arces-
The relative successful of fry plants is really dependent on the life history of the fish we are working with. Fish like chum, pink and sockeye salmon that migrate almost immediately downstream after emerging from the gravel can do pretty well with fry plants and egg boxes. However fish that spend extend periods of time in the river (coho and steelhead) do not. To have any success with steelhead one needs to scatter the fry extensively - at least one study found that if the steelhead fry did not find a rearing niche with a 100 yards of so of the release they just disappeared.

When look at the boosting the production of a fish like steelhead that spend several years in freshwater many factors limit the population production. Most typically the population bottle neck is not getting out of the gravel but rather finding habitat(s) to survve low flows during the summer/early fall as well as winter floods while all the time finding enough food and security from predators. That is why so many of us keep yapping about habitat.

Actually the planting of wild steelhead fry as a hatchery stategy to boost natural populations is not a new idea. In fact it was the main strategy for nearly 50 years. Typically what was down was that a productive stream was trapped with a weir. The returns adults collected, spawned and the resulting fry released at the trapping site and other areas. These types of programs typcially last 4 to 8 years when the stream's steelhead would disappear and the hatchery effort would move to a new local. While the basic idea intuitively seems sound experience has shown that it rarely produces much in the way of returns (for the reason above).

It was not until aobut 1950 when the state biologist finally figured out the to be successful in producing significant returns of fish they needed to be planted as smolts (6 to 9 inches long) in the spring (late April to early June just like the wild fish). It was the success of this program that fueled what many ocnsider to the heyday of steelhead fishing - the late 1950s and 1960s.

Tight lines
S malma