Do hatchery salmon come from the native stock of the river or are there a few strains used for all rivers like steelhead?

Yes and no. Some stocks used in hatcheries are local and some are moved around. For a long time, the difference was that the only released steelhead came from the Mother Station while for salmon what came back was used so there was some local adaptation.

Historically, the original stock in a hatchery most likely came from in-basin fish. If one digs into the history, hatcheries have been operational in this state since 1895. It wasn't uncommon for WDF to move eggs between river basins/hatcheries depending on returns and or losses at individual hatcheries. The "pure" stocks of "wild" fish that existed in the 1890s aren't around. There has been a lot of mixing of stocks resulting, in my opinion, composite stocks in all of our river basins.

For hatchery salmon to be derived entirely from local stock would be the exception to the rule. The salmon hatchery on Soose Creek, tributary to the Green River, was one of the earliest Puget Sound (PS) hatcheries. It's broodstock was derived from local native fall Chinook and coho. When other hatcheries were built, the easiest way to obtain broodstock was to get a wet gunnysack of eyed eggs from Green River and drive them to the new hatchery. Obtaining local broodstock is time consuming, considering how much work is involved for the number of eggs obtained.

As a result, all hatchery fall Chinook in PS, including Hood Canal, are derived from Green River stock. Most PS hatchery coho are as well, but since a lot of hatcheries are located on tributary creeks, some local coho frequently became part of the mix of hatchery brood stock.

Broodstock exceptions are spring and summer Chinook in the Nooksack, Skagit, Stillaguamish, Skykomish, and White Rivers, where local native broodstock were utilized.

Chambers Creek and South Tacoma were the universal donor broodstock for all western WA hatchery winter steelhead, and Skamania (Washougal, Wind, and Klickitat) was the universal donor broodstock for summer steelhead until some more recent smaller local broodstock programs began.

The difference in operation being that with salmon, once founded the hatchery used what came back there. Except for massive shortfalls. This allowed for some local adaptation. Further, salmon were generally incubated and reared on surface water sources which reflected the "natural" stream temperatures.

WDG steelhead eggs were all collected at Mother sites and eggs distributed around the state. WDG water sources tended to be groundwater/spring which allowed for all the transfers due to disease considerations but also had incubation and rearing occurring on water warmer than local surface waters. So, not only was there no use of locally returning fish (for a long time) but the early life was in water radically different from natural which helped make them poor reproducers in the wild.

Yeah, CM, I think it was the late 1980s when they shifted to using locally returning hatchery winter steelhead broodstock, instead of fresh imports from Tacoma every year. At least on the Skagit and north sound tributaries. And but for a few exceptions, hatchery winter steelhead returns went from bad to worse. And now we have hatchery stations that can't make, or just barely make, broodstock needs even with no fishing. With the poor ocean survivals these days, I'd like to see an analysis of each hatchery program to see if any of them pencil out economically, or if we're just pouring money down a hatchery rat hole.

Of course they went from bad to worse. The S Tacoma fish were incubated and reared on warm water. Decades of selection enforced that. Then, off to the hinterlands and cold water.

If you look at the few places with complete run wild R/S you see that steelhead rarely have a 1:1 R/S for all first returns. They need repeats. Further, R/S increases with decreasing smolt age. Where I have a longer data set, an average smolt age of 1.5 got you and R/S of 1. Which is why hatchery runs worked for so long when there were decent marine survivals. Lose that, and you need a whole lot of repeats, which don't seem to happen when you kill spawn. I asked the Pacific Coast steelhead conference folks for any data to refute this view and none had it.

Another aspect of steelhead and hatchery programs, at least as it appeared at the Steelhead Conferences, was that the most successful programs were the largest; releases in the 100-200-and up K. Most programs now are tiny. Small programs are made up of few spawners.....
Which suggests to me that hatchery steelhead should be confined to a few "destroyed/compromised" systems like Cowlitz and Green with program release minimums of 250K, maybe go for 500K.

and Elwha summer/fall and Dungeness spring.

I'd wager that's now true of most every PS winter steelhead program. Spinning their wheels for the sake of spinning their wheels... an end unto itself with little or no actual benefit to the recreational fisheries for which they were intended.

Perhaps WDFW should be asked why they produce hatchery fish and how they measure "success".

Why aren’t streams like the Samammish slough used for test hatcheries? It’s clear Herschel the sea lion killed them all and I don’t know if any even return to that river? Why not use the few fish that come back(if any) and establish a huge hatchery operation that anglers could utilize? Is that a bad idea or not?

Really sucks to see a river that once had d runs used for nothing. All kinds of tests and experiments could be done to figure out how to restore other watersheds. The UW is right there to boot.

Water and water quality. A hatchery needs a clean, disease free supply that is cold enough too support the fish and in sufficient quantity. Form long experience in searching, there are few good sites left where decent water is available. And The Sammamish slough isn't one of them.

It is rather obvious that you cannot have a large hatchery program and a vibrant wild population on the same stream. IF we want huge hatchery runs of steelhead then we will need to write off specific rivers. Triage. One or the other.

This is why I asked. I see a hatchery on the slough wouldn’t work but what would make it work? It obviously worked a long time ago, what would need to happen to make it work today?

Don't think there ever was a state hatchery on the Slough. I don't recall hearing of any.

First requirement is probably 20-50 cfs of pathogen free (well) water. Available 24/7/365. Temperature of 5o would be ok, colder would be better. Need enough land out of the floodplain for the hatchery, buildings, and such.

I think it’s doable and would be a great experiment to see just what it takes to bring the dead to life.

Barnaby Slough, Skagit River.

Plant fish.

What does the UW have to do with anything? The UW is not in the hatchery business, nor does it operate an existing hatchery. Been there, done that, wrote the books and have since moved on to other sciences.

Seems to me this would be a state and tribal issue, seeing how they are comanagers in this game?



I'm pretty sure this experiment has already been done. Maybe not on every river/slough/waterway that the John Q Public has a fancy for.

You seem to live in a world where you believe that those that manage our aquatic environments and the fish that live in them actually care about what you think or want. Recreational anglers are the very last user group to have a say or stake in any of this.

But hey, keep on truckin', as they say. Don't let me get in the way.

You seem upset.