I really appreciate all the previous discussions although I wish we could have some input from the anti-hatchery advocates on that last cut/paste from Dr. Brannon by Locust; especially from Mr. McMillan from Washington Trout.

Dr Brannon seems to indicate that it has been poor management practices that have given the hatchery fish a bad name while the anti-hatchery groups want you to believe that any returning hatchery adult that spawns in the wild is typhoid Mary/John. Well, which actually is it?

Let’s take an integrated hatchery strategy on a river system with a depressed wild run but still enough habitat to support a larger population. A hatchery raised fry of “river of origin stock,” raised to smolt at the hatchery, domesticated to the extreme, is released. Now this fish, having the luxury to have escaped most of the selective impacts for the first, say 1/3 of its life, has made it successfully out to the marine environment, survived, and is now returning as an adult, and lets just pretend that it was imprinted good enough to make it back to it’s original natal stream/spawning area. So now this fish pairs up with another ripe fish, either wild or hatchery. They spawn in the river. What would be the egg to adult success of this spawning pair? Or in other words, what would the contribution be of this spawning pair (brood) to the next spawning brood (F1)? Then what would the F1’s year brood group (if any) contribution be to the following generation (F2)? Dr Brannon would seem to indicate that, in a properly run hatchery, with appropriate broodstock, there would be an adequate F1 generation spawning wild which would produce an increased F2 generation and so on. The anti-hatchery groups are adamant claiming that the original hatchery brood would produce few, if any; F1’s and even fewer or zero F2’s. Which is it?