....it would seem that it would only take a few generations to successfully breed out most of the negative hatchery traits thereby returning you to a fish that is genetically adapted to its specific stream and could therefore be called native.
BINGO!
That's how all native strains of salmonids were created over the eons..... by re-colonizing and reclaiming habitats lost and gained with the advance and retreat of glaciers, wiped out by volcanic lahars, or rearranged by massive shifts in the land mass.
When that critter is subjected to the full adversity of relentless selection pressures... and made to survive all manner of natural perils... at every life stage of its natural history.... from gravel to gravel.... it is a WILD fish through and through. Its progeny, genetically perpetuated over several generations become defacto native fish to that basin.
In reality, wild salmon are like parasites that you just can't get rid of.... they simply keep coming back to reclaim any suitable spawning/rearing habitat available to them. It's what they have done for millennia. They just require free passage from the riverine nursery to the ocean pasture and a way back to the spawning grounds as adults.
Oh yeah, it helps when we don't kill them off along the way.
As a VERY wise man once said, "If you don't kill them, they WILL spawn!"
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"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)
"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)
The Keen Eye MDLong Live the Kings!
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