Lifter you mentioned a large portion.
How is 2000 out of 17,000 coho and 5,500 kings a large portion of the fish?
Also these are volunteers doing this. Without the volunteers it would not take place because the department claims that it is too expensive. The real reason is that they profit off of them by selling them to fish buyers. Please let me know of any other rivers that participate in this that you are aware of. My research turns up very little with many rivers not doing any at all. And yet the department wonders why our hatchery fish are not surviving.
This is the recurring theme. Fish not returning results in fish being too expensive to raise which results in fishing being shut down. Then people say why are your raising the fish just to have them return and not be able to fish on them? Then the hatchery gets shut down but ironically no government employees loose their job. All of them should loose their job if the hatchery is shut down. Exactly 0 lost their job when the steelhead program was discontinued. This scenario plays into what the department wants (less work for the same or more pay). It also plays into what you anti-hatchery wild cnr folks want too (a river all to yourself to cast your flys). The gene bank theory is a gold mine for the department. They don't have to take responsibility for the closure directly and try to make themselves look good at the same time (giving themselves a pat on the back). But no one lost their job when those hatcheries closed down either. Yes I guess that I am another disgruntled angler but I think that I represent the majority and I see the writing on the wall with the same old story being played out on each river system.