Official word is that we (OPGA and WDFW) will be moving the program over to the Bogachiel and the Sol Duc will be classified as a 'Wild Steelhead Gene Bank" that will be "devoid of any hatchery interaction". Although I'm not quite sure how the hundreds of stray Chambers fish don't factor into that in some way

I too feel a mistake, as there's a lot that isn't on paper that is going to factor in here ... unfortunately, poaching issues are going to be perhaps one of the largest. I would bet my drifter that the number of fish taken for the program will now simply disappear into many local smokers without a legal fish to retain this time time of year. A sad state of affairs, but a goodly number of "anglers" look at things much differently and see fishing strictly as a harvest based activity ... whether legal or not.

In the early days of the program, it was often tough to collect the broodstock ... now the river has far and away the most early wild returners early in the season. The data that the state and tribe came up with was either so woefully incomplete or skewed (tribe stated that perhaps they forgot to teach all processors to look for belly clips) .... it was impossible to ever grasp the actual returns of the fish. yet all anecdotal and first hand-observations on my part showed pretty solid returns.

My personal feelings were that we should have studied things further, but it's moot now. We're currently investigating possibilities for the new facility and also exploring the idea of using the current facility to switch over to brooding fall kings instead of steelhead since the 'Wild Steelhead Gene Bank" has no bearing on salmon plants.