Is this documented somewhere? The only broodstocking program I know of in Washington I am totally unsure is even ran by WDFW, and my thoughts was it was ran by guides. Yet those fish seem to be surplus on that system every year, as the numbers on that sytem for wild fish seem to be doing great, yet with an added bonus amount of fish.

Now if you were to take the Skykomish( since we all like to throw that river around) not sure the numbers on it, not going to look yet i know it is going into a depressed state. Lets say the Main stem gets 1500 wild fish a year, you have the Wallace, and Reiter kick out another 500 and 300 hatchery fish respectively minus fishermens take. You raise an extra 1200 or so between wallace and reiter with non native strain fish I presume. So instead of raising those 1200 hatchery fish, if you implemented a 4 year program of broodstocking you could legitimately add a more healthy group of hatchery fish with native strain and without the retarding effects as i stated before.... which in essence would make them 1 generation hatchery fish.... not domesticated like the strains we use now. Not dumbed down and not from another basin.

Now you have a viable hatchery native fish that is used to rebound stocks in a short period. So the returning numbers since it will be a local fish will be higher than current hatchery fish. Lets say we add a little on survival rate.... so now the numbers are.

1500 native wild fish - those used for broodstocking
1400 native hatchery fish for a total of near 2500 or something that ballpark after the broodstocking amount is taken out.

Now for the kicker, with this plan all hatchery clipped fish are not for harvest. They are for recolonization and boom effect. Instead of 1500 natives in 4 years you would now have 2500 spawning in the mainstem, the whole program goes CNR. Now there is no hybridizing on a mass scale, its all CNR, and to top it off every system with a hatchery goes through this program in the Sound. You could literally recreate whole runs very quickly without the problems of hatchery fish. Now everyone is not flocking to the OP, instead everyone hits the local creek..... for steelheaders. Literally there is not that many steelhead fishermen compared to salmon fishermen. Me and my buddy fished the carbon about 40 to 50 times from November to February and came across maybe a handful of people in all those trips combined. 95% of fishermen want to fish for meat. I know there is a loophole here, I just don't know it. Someone point it out so I can dismiss this idea.