This year on the Saremento river they had an outstanding king return. And this is the first returning adults of the smolts being barged to SF bay, to bypass all or most of the in river predication.
If the hatchery fish are so spendy, why doesn’t this state consider barging all smelt on CR,to Astoria. Getting them past most of the predication, and Dam/hydro losses. Maybe do the same in the hood canal to get them past the floating bridge. Smelt on Chehalis and it’s tributary could be trucked to the bay.
Instead of 10% or fewer making it to the bay, the entire group would.
Might be the single best way to help the Whales.

Matt

Barging the hatchery production, which this likely was, would be a good way to wipe out the wild stock. Reduce the prey base but keep the predators. Work as well as reducing hatchery plants but still fishing at the same rates. Besides, it would crash the Big C fisheries for walleye and smallies.

If you are trying to protect a few stocks, this might work. For example, I worked a smolt trap that we operated from March to June. Smolts were moving the whole time and we know we had smolts two weeks earlier than that because they were big enough to be caught in the adult trap. First year we had smolts into early July. It would be prohibitively expensive to collect a river's smolts far enough upstream to make a survival difference and transport them downstream past the predators.

If the decision is made to forego wild production, then collect and transport at each hatchery. One cheape option, which some folks looked at, was actually to construct a pipeline into which you paced the smolts and sent them downstream. That would work, until the hit the outhitting of the pipe but they would likely overwhelm most of the predators.

They used to barge Salmon and Steelhead on the Snake and Columbia. It was the sole method. I forget the details but it didn't work as well as dumping xtra water in the Spring to simulate natural spring runoff, a practice still followed today. I think it had to do something with water temperature being an issue?

How does barging fish wipe out wild fish, it would be no different then if no hatchery fish existed at all. Predators would still feast on the wild fish, we have created so many traps for easy predation With dams, it is a joke. Just like any predator the more food avail the larger the predator base. You can increase plants all day long and the more you plant the larger the predator base will become. I can go out and catch a Springer or two, but 50 walleye in a day. Maybe our priority is predators. Not the whales

Cheaper to dump more water, and they dumped below Bonni, still had to survive a lot of predator infested river. Dump in Astoria.

Bottom line....Just MORE predators, total number wise....

I don't know about ALL the river systems BUT I do know the Chehalis...late 60's, 70's, 80, 90's, early 2000.....Above Montesano, there used to be a few seals but it was no big deal.....lots of both wild and hatchery fish, if the seals were a bother, just motor to a different area.

Now days the amount of seals AND SEA LIONS above Montesano, some days, are unbelievable. The amount of bank and boat fishermen makes it tough to "pick up and move"....so I just choose to wait until they leave or get full.

Westport has "lots" of both seals and sea lions...many of the floats are taken over by the sea lions....tourists like to see them, no natural enemies so numbers continue to increase...… grrrrrrrrr

They do this for summer runs on the Seymour up in Vancouver BC. Turns out escapement is quite a bit higher if they don't have to travel through Vancouver harbor.

MM, the fundamental difference is that there are far fewer wild fish now than before we had hatcheries. Nature was in balance, predator and prey. Since the predator base has increased (as you point out) and the wild fish have decreased, the effects of barging the hatchery fish would be devastating to the wild run.

Easy cheesy, both Bass and Walleye are non native species to both Columbia River and lake Washington. They consume more then 24 million smolt annually, a bass upwards of one per day and Walleye upwards of two plus per day, Salmon and Steelhead are Native and suffering at the hands of these predators. Time to eradicate the non native species or remove the Dams that hold the smolt back.

It is not a matter of the Walleye collapse, they don’t belong in the first place, save our salmon and steelhead and whales. That should be the priority. No barging required then