Traditional hatchery programs pose a much lower threat to genetic infiltration of the wild winter run stocks, mainly due to a fairly extreme temporal disparity between arrival and spawning times. There should also be effective collection systems to get the unharvested ones out of the rivers.

To that end, there's your perfect opportunity to have harvest and to not have to remove wild fish eggs and sperm from the population to do it.

You don't have to choose whether we have broodstock programs or no harvest...you can have plenty of harvest without them, with less bad effects on the wild population.

This, however, may not be as good of a harvest opportunity as some would like...sorry. If you're looking to have harvest and have wild fish, then this is the most responsible way to go. If harvest is your main impetus, then at least don't pay lip service to helping wild fish and then discuss how great broodstock programs are...admit at least that your harvest opportunity is more important to you than your wild fish.

Fish on...

Todd