This article was in the Dec/Jan issue of the "Out Door life" 2005


Steelhead Doom

Smolt deaths at the Cowlitz hatchery have jeopardized the fishery

Southwest Washington anglers will be competing for severely reduced numbers of steelhead for the next three years, thanks to a series of mechanical and biological setbacks in the Cowlitz River Trout Hatchery.
Tacoma Power and Light-which operates two fish-rearing facilities on this Columbia River tributary- recently confirmed that several hundred thousand summer and winter steelhead smolts were killed in 2002, 2003, and 2004 due to “mechanical malfunctions” in the hatchery’s 50-acre steelhead rearing ponds. In at least two cases, according to Friends of the Cowlitz, a watershed conservation organization, the facility’s ozone treatment system was operated incorrectly, exposing thousands of juvenile steelhead to fatal disease. The ultimate result: the return classes of 2005, 2006, and 2007 will be almost 40 percent below production goals, a shortage of between 1 and 1.25 million summer and winter fish.
The impact on the Cowlitz fishery is already being felt. “This summer was the worst steelhead fishing I’ve ever seen on the Cowlitz,” said Clancy Holt, president of the Southwest Washington Guides Association and 30-year veteran of the Columbia system. “The fish just weren’t there. That hatchery has all but killed one of the best steelhead fisheries in the west.”