I've had the the pleasure to fish the Quinault now for the past 3 yrs. in the Creek and the main river, I'm self-employed and have had the opportunity to fish the system when the hatchery fish start to show at the begining of Dec. till Mid-March on the avg . of 2 1/2 to 3 days a week or as long as my 33 yr. old elbow can take and in the Creek alone I must have hooked close to or over 1000 fish, not all landed of course, I use a IMX 1082S's w/8lb sometimes 10lb test & Shim. Stradics', by the way in my opinion is the best setup a man can evenly test his skills against the O-Mykiss, this is not a setup for the faint-hearted, (8'6" to 9' mag-med. 12-17lb test,"Oh I hope my leader doesn't break" pool cue totin' guys,) cuz you will break off! These hatchery fish are big 29" to 35", don't own a scale, rod tip to 4th eye is 30". Anyways to get to the point 90 percent of the fish I've landed are clipped and I have been to the hatchery 2x when they circumsized the little fighters, they actually pay these people to come in and do this. The sponsor I fish with the most in the creek works at the hatchery, and in the 15+ yrs he's been working there can verify that with the exception to a couple of early releases due to fear of contamination or some other circumstance that might have endangered the young fingerling in the rearing ponds. I don't know about the Salmon river hatchery or the Lake's hatchery but he claims that they are because they supply the Salmon river also, all the hatcheries' work close together, so I assume they do, he has shown me how to distinguish the non-clipped hatchery and wild fish, although not scientific there is distinguishing consistiency to his method.
But to get back to the topic at hand, I catch Steelhead with great consistiency all yr. long not just in the Steelhead paradise of the Quinault, heck that just 4 months out of 11. So I don't buy fish from the market, its there for a reason,,, non-fisherpeople, if it bother's you let them know, and if you can't catch I guess your gonna have to buy it. Later