WN1A Interesting read for sure. You stated that the smolt are dissapearing at the estuary's. On the Nasale I have watched the cormorants follow the smolt down river with the tide, its like they are playing leapfrog, flocks of 100's. Here is a simple thought through the eye of a cormorant, ah steelehead smolt on the menue this week, next week chum smolt, next week coho smolt, next week chinook smolt, ok out of smolts so on to herring for a while, ah smelt are here, on to smelt, and lets not forget squid which are around summer and winter. Ok so much for the menue, now on to the count. For arguments sake it only takes 10 smolt to feed mr cormorant for a week. Only now we 1000's of cormorant so a lot of food is eaten every week. The limiting item in the cormorant population is food, assume we have enough cormorant to eat nearly all the smolt. Here is where it gets tricky as we only have a few fish coming back to spawn to produce smolt so I think there is just enough fish to barly keep up a presence. Since a smolt is like a steak to a cormorant, he is all over it when available........Find a substitute for that steak or remove the cormorant and you might fix the problem. I really think most of the smolt are eaten by predators at the estuary.........What will happen if you, as an experiment let loose about 2 million smolt each, from about 10 creeks at the same time......would there be a better survival rate since the birds are now full and can let some swim on by? A little long winded but what do you think?

This is not a hatchery is best post, just thinking about the great numbers of fish it might take for good survival.