Planting more smolts is only part of the equation!

Just for fun I found 3 rivers (the Quinault on the coast, the Cowlitz on the lower Columbia and the Skagit on Puget Sound) that all received smolt plants of at least 500,000 winter smolts the same year. Just looking at the returns (sport catch plus tribal plus hatchery rack return) two years later (2000/2001)I found the smolt to return survival variety quite a bit.

On the Quinault return rate was 1.9%
On the Cowlitz it was 1.0%
On the Skagit it was 0.4%

Or based on the limited sample at a smolt plant of 500,000 the Cowlitz would get 2.5 times as many fish back as the Skagit and the Quinault would get 4.75 times as many fish back as the Skagit.

Curt