I don't mean to speak for the proponents of broodstock programs, but I often hear that the effectiveness of them is based in "look how good the fishing is now!", which may not have anything whatsoever to do with the actual effectiveness of the broodstock program.

As Salmo pointed out above, the presence of broodstock fish to fish for is not likely in any way indicative of the effectiveness or quality of the program...there are some factors that need to be measured, and the quality of the fishing isn't one of them.

For every two steelhead removed from the gene pool to enter the broodstock program, how many wild fish would they have produced if they were left in the river? How many fish did the program make out of those two fish? Perhaps far more importantly, a few generations down the road...what does the legacy of those two fish look like now?

Are their children and grandchildren contributing to the wild stocks? Comparatively, how many fish are produced three or four generations down the road by leaving the wild fish in the river? How many are produced by taking them into the program?

At what cost? It's debatable as to whether a broodstock program can even produce the same amount of recruits as leaving the fish in the river can, but it's not debatable as to the fitness and success of the progreny of truly wild fish versus the broodstock fish. What is debatable, also, is the long term effect of the program.

Will it, like other basic hatchery programs, inbreed itself out of existence? Will there be enough wild fish influence left to keep that from happening?

My fear is that the answer to that question is no...and once we realize it, we don't have any true wild fish left now, either, as they've all been co-opted into the broodstock program.

I think it's a big mistake to equate "look how good the fishing is now!" with "the broodstock program is working"...because you're talking apples and oranges on that call.

Fish on...

Todd

P.S. Speaking just for myself, I contribute to broodstock programs in this way...if I catch a broodstocked fish, I kill it just as fast as if it were a Chambers Creek turd, and greatly lament the fact that wild fish gametes had to be removed from the gene pool to make it.