Fishyologist -
I suspect that you may have mis-read my last post regarding survivals - what I said was

"For wild coho and steelhead it is typcially for only 1 to 5 % of the eggs to survive the freshwater enivrnoment."

Thought that was pretty clear that was the total for the entire period in freshwater. I did go to illustrate an example of the kinds of mortality that occurs even after the fish emerges from the egg. Even if it was poorly written the intent was to illustrate that the freshwater envirnoment is a hostile place exterting significant selective pressures on those populations. And that those pressures inlcude different forces than those operating in the hatchery envirnoment.

A coho survival of 0.25% implies that 800 smolts (2/0.0025) would be needed to produce just 2 returning adults. A value of 800 smolts/female for coho is much higher (nearly an order of magnitude) than I have typcially seen with coho production. Unless the freshwater envirnoment of those population is exceptionally productive that kind survival would indicate that those populations must in serious trouble. For comparison the coho survival in Northern Puget Sound is typcially 10 to 50 times higher than the 0.25% you cite as being observed on the coast.

Since you likely are familar with the literature I see no reason to provide cites. Howeve I will mention that some of the work on the poor preformance of hatchery steelhead spawning in the wild has come from the research being done on the Kalama River by WDFW staff. If you are suggesting that WDFW (operator of one of the largest hachery systems in the world) is anti-hatchery you will likely have a creditability problem on the site.

tight lines
S malma