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A big issue at the Chambers Creek hatchery was the very high temperatures that were used historically to produce 1 year smolts was also causing high mortalies in the developing eggs (at times more than 50%). With improving fish culture methods and foods it became possible to rear those hatchery fry to acceptable smolt size in a single growing season at most WDFW hatcheries. It only made sense to de-centralize the culture of those steelhead (and of course you point of the terrible survival of south sound steelhead had to be a factor as well).

As an aside the Chambers Creek hatchery fish did not originate from Chambers Creek. They were in fact a composite stock of brood fish collected from 7 or 8 river basins. It was common to take advantage the warm water temperatures (mid-50s) found at Chambers Creek to jump start the developement of the eggs and accerlate the growth of the fry to reach acceptable smolt size. It was typical the as the fry grow to a decent size to transfer them from Chambers Creek to other rear facilities. Since essentially all the hatchery steelhead went through the Chambers Creek hatchery it was natural to refer to them as Chambers Creek steelhead.

By the way NMFS paper on the historic Puget Sound steelhead populations does not list Chamber Creek as a population.

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