Just came across this document.

DNS 20-004: CALAWAH WILD STEELHEAD BROOD STOCK PROGRAM AT THE BOGACHIEL HATCHERY


https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/...chiel_hatch.pdf


This program replaces the current wild broodstock program on the Bogachiel River. Within the last couple years since the program has switched to the Bogachiel River, there have been two major landslides impacting efforts to obtain broodstock. The Calawah tends to run clearer during the winter months. Additionally, finding a suitable acclimation site has been problematic. The existing Calawah Acclimation site would provide a suitable site to release steelhead from. Approximately 19,000 2019 brood year juvenile steelhead from wild Calawah steelhead adults will be reared and released from Calawah Acclimation Pond into their natal stream at approximately RM 1. Release size will be greater than 10 fpp in April and May of 2020. Broodstock will be captured by hook and line or seine within the Calawah River primarily by local guide association members. Many of the drift boats have live tanks on board to accommodate holding of the wild steelhead. Adult steelhead will then be transferred to WDFW planting tanks where they are then transported to the Bogachiel Hatchery for holding until ready to spawn. Every attempt will be made to live spawn broodstock and return back to the Calawah. All released smolts will be adipose clipped with additional external mark or coded wire tagged.
Subsequent years will have a release goal of 35,000 to 50,000 progeny from wild parents.

Awesome! Good to hear the legacy of Snider Crk. continues and modifying the program to make it work better. Hopefully fishers can reap some benefit from it in the future.

For those with a better knowledge, could someone try to answer this question. If these fish are being reared and released at river mile one, will most stop in that area when coming back or will they be more likely to spread out and go higher into the system.

They are hatchery turds,and will stray and act goofy like most other hatchery turds . I thought the C•••••h river had a decent native run?

It would be interesting to find out more about the purpose and the operation of the program. The DNS makes it sound like the location is basically changing just because of convenience, but a DNS is not designed to provide any real information about the program. I would guess if they could just change locations without mentioning the status of the population, that this program is simply for harvest rather than conservation. I did look for an HGMP for this program but didn't find one. Q: Does WDFW complete HGMP's for hatchery programs where they don't have listed populations? The DNS does state that the program will not have a significant adverse impact on the environment. Q: Does WDFW consider the fish part of the environment? If so, I think there could be a better discussion of why they came to that conclusion.

I just found the environmental checklist for this project. About the only thing it says about the impact to fish is this:

"Proposed measures to preserve or enhance wildlife, if any:
These updates to the program through adipose fin clipping cwt’ing and rearing location supports mark-selective fishing opportunity, and improves the ability to evaluate and further limits impact on wild steelhead."

I believe it is a program that is meant to replace the older Snider Cr program that was discontinued. Here's a blurb from the OPGA site: http://www.olympicpeninsulaguidesassociation.com/events.html

"Broodstock Program

Many of the area's guides and businesses, as well as many of our clients, have played a very important role on an enhancement project that was based on a tributary to the upper Sol Duc named Snider Creek. With this broodstock program, between 50,000 to 100,000 smolt were planted using wild steelhead, rather than returning hatchery fish for the parent stock of the young. The Snider Creek Project became an important part of the rebuilding and continued maintenance of the early-run native Steelhead stocks on the Sol Duc River. When the Sol Duc river was deemed a "wild steelhead gene bank" river in 2012 the Snider Creek program was relocated to the Bogachiel and we are working on building it back up."

Not sure about the details of operation.

I would think that even a rudimentary environmental checklist would have some discussion of the expected effects of the program on some basic biologic values like the abundance and productivity of the wild and composite population and at least some cursory discussion of the potential genetic effects of the program before one would issue a Determination of Nonsignificance. Apparently not.

Sometimes I think the process is designed to shed light on a project while in other cases the process is designed to conceal.

At best, that should be an MDNS as there are effects of the cultured fish on the wild runs and effects of the culture itself on the environment.

I don't think the department treats their own projects the way they would treat someone else's. If a developer, for instance, was going to build something that would have an effect on abundance and productivity of natural spawning steelhead in the Calawah, and there was evidence that this would occur, would they be willing to say there was no significance to that developer's project? Not on your life!

Agreed.

Not to mention the fact that the program is ripping wild fish from spawning grounds, then raising progeny in a hatchery and then marking them, enabling their retention in the sport fishery where otherwise the offspring would not.

Depending what the current escapement is, how the broodstock is collected, what the hatchery productivity is, what the productivity of the hatchery progeny are once they return is, what harvest rate is going to be applied, what proportion of the natural population is going to be made up of hatchery returns (and a bunch of other questions), this program may be fine. However, given the paucity of information provided by the WDFW hatchery folks to whatever part of WDFW that wrote this Determination of Nonsignificance, making that determination is pretty much [Bleeeeep!], IMHO (and bleeeeep is not what I wrote).

Probably stay, for a while, where they were planted then its "onward".

There will "probably" never be a legal "catch and kill" wild steelhead in Washington State.

You want to catch and kill a Native steelhead, then I suggest you book a guide trip with a tribal guide, on a river that still has wild steelhead.

There are zero wild steelhead.

All have been infected by the man virus.

Not sure about this program but the Snider Crk program used to clip a ventral fin to ID it's origin. Also legal to retain such a clip.

These fish will be clipped, as well.

I agree that they will probably hang out around the Ponds for a bit, but eventually will go upstream. It's too bad they can't drive them up and release them at the forks, or something.

Fish on...

Todd

I believe that steelhead will behave a lot like coho in that they will attempt to get as far upstream as is possible given streamflows. They may hold around the release site for a while but if prevented from entering (going "upstream") they will likely look elsewhere. This is especially so as the fish reach maturity.

Also, the males will hang around longer, looking for females. The hens will spawn and boogie back to sea. The males will keep looking to spawn.

That brings up a question. What percentage of males to females survive to spawn again? In all my years, I have caught a ton of spawners and most if not all were female snakes. I suppose the dark males still milking, could be on their way out, but never seem totally empty.

If I remember correctly, someone told me that one of the Tribal hatcheries were experimenting in holding hand spawned hen steelhead in tanks, giving them seeing what could be done to get them healthy before releasing them, things like putting into salt water tanks, feeding them and giving them antibodies, etc. . The hope was to get a high percentage of hatchery or brood stock repeat spawners. Has anyone heard of any experiments in doing this, and if so what the results were, and if not, then why not?

I know this has been tried off and on since the 70s. Also know that some hatchery steelhead were "reconditioned" and put into lowland lakes for OD.

My team did try steelhead reconditioning. First thing is you need them into a reconditioning pond to start as soon as you can, the longer you hold them the greater the mortality. Second your going to need a more than one barrel of formalin. ( fungus ) Then getting them on feed to build up their strength is critical and floating feed works best.

Now straight to a lake just as soon they arrive at a hatchery works best but most hatcheries cannot do that as eggtake is important. Bottom line it can be done but you will loose around half of the adults. Then when you get them into a lake strangely enough they do not bite well until late summer and then they are as aggressive as can be. No idea why other than it takes that long to get themselves right.

I think that the Yakama Nation has been doing this consistently longer than anyone else I know. Here are links to some of their project reports:

CRITFC Steelhead Kelt Reconditioning

Yakama Nation Steelhead Kelt Reconditioning

And a presentation to the PSMFC (For some reason the link procedure wouldn't work here:
https://www.psmfc.org/steelhead/2016/Hatch_Tues_PM_Kelt_Steelhead_PSMFC_2016.pdf

One year on our creeks we had huge Carpenter Ant emergence. The wild steelhead kelts (especially females) were plugged with them and in really nice shape. We had some pretty bright ones whose bellies were rather tight. Further, we passed downstream almost every female that had gone up. Some were close to dead and really fungused while others were pretty clean.

Often thought that fishing a big black ant, dry, in late May on a steelhead river just might be a kick.

It's almost like you had a flashback to the Wenatchee River in the early 80s

A black ant in the surface film was actually quite productive...but those were summer runs, of course.

Fish on...

Todd

I was working with winters, but the females really gorged post spawning.

I wonder if, pre all the development and logging, if there weren't big spring bug emergences like ants and termites that helped feed the kelts.

I remember some study done on a remote stream in Russia I think that didn’t have any fishing pressure. I think something like 30% of the females were repeat spawners.

Males were much lower as females dump their eggs and head back out while males will hang around and try to spawn multiple females so have much higher mortality.

For sure.

I hope that, unlike with the Snider Creek program, WDFW actually monitors the success of this program with respect to number of broodstock captured, number of eggs derived, egg to fry success, fry to smolt success, and most importantly, smolt to recruit rate. Absent these parameters it will be impossible to know if the program is any improvement over leaving the natural broodstock in the river doing their reproduction . . . naturally.

While producing fish for harvest is a desirable outcome, I'm less enthused if it comes at the expense of simply annually mining wild broodstock from the natural environment and its wild steelhead population.

Some of the Kamchatkan streams have 90% repeats and many Alaskan streams are above 50%, with most being female.

Just given the situation in Kamchatka (really cold water) I would expect old smolts. As I have noted before, I have never seen a wild run in WA/OR/CA where the first time spawners had an R/S that averaged 1.0; they were all lower. The Keogh study showed that as smolts got older, the river produced fewer, exacerbating the R/S issue. Repeats are mandatory for wild steelhead, unless you can find a system where almost all the smolts are age-1. And, as noted above, most of the repeats are females.

I couldn't agree more.

This has always been my problem with broodstock programs, as well...if there was documented proof that they resulted in more wild fish, or even a no net loss to wild fish while adding harvestable wild-ish hatchery fish to the mix, I'd be all over it.

Mostly what I hear from the proponents, however, is anecdotal and focused on the quality of the hatchery fish they get to harvest.

If all we are doing is removing wild fish from the gene pool, making hatchery fish out of them, and harvesting them, then we may as well just harvest the wild fish, that program costs zero dollars.

Or...don't.

Fish on...

Todd