Getting Cedar eggs and moving them would require approval of the local Tribes. If there was a surplus, maybe, but they won't be interested in cutting off their future, dim as it may be.'

That's easy. Don't tell them. What the tribes don't know won't hurt them. To many hens in the hen house and rule followers around is part of the problem.

C'man is correct. These days it is a multi-stakeholder process to make an inter-basin transfer of fish or eggs. Crazy as the LW sockeye situation is, the Cedar is considered "under-escaped." There is no way the parties would agree to shipping eggs out of basin. It was hard enough to obtain them from Baker, which back when the agreement was being negotiated, Baker had a consistent surplus. Since then, Baker returns have decreased like everywhere else, so the number of eggs provided for Cushman has decreased. Still, the program has promise as adults are returning. It will just take an extra generation to reach production goals.

Here's a question: If a "dirty" Lake Washington was much more conducive to Sockeye production... why did the state clean it up?

Waterfront land values...

Forward Thrust, a 1968 clean water initiative along with some other things. Lk WA was so polluted because many of the urban sewer outfalls dumped untreated sewage directly into the lake. OK, maybe there was primary, but no secondary treatment. The lake was too dirty to allow people to swim in it, for example. Seattle didn't want to wait around for the Clean Water Act to force them into action. For a majority of people, producing the maximum number of sockeye smolts wasn't the most important attribute of Lake Washington.

It seems like a great place for iron seeding,

Thanks Salmo. It seems rather ironic that a lake so polluted that people couldn't swim in it was beneficial for sockeye salmon production. It's too bad that a balance can't be struck... keeping the specific elements that benefit the salmon.

I fly fished a lake river system 25+ yrs ago for Sockeye in SE AK, on a pilot's recommendation. Stayed in a FS cabin on the lake where the river began. It had a boat there, we flew in an outboard w/ us. Used it to bomb around the lake. Discovered a camp half way up up the lake with discarded 55g drums all over the place. Pilot said Fisheries camped there to fertilize the lake to aid Sockeye production to benefit the commercials. Don't know what they dumped in there but the adult return sizes were large for Sockeye. I remember some males pushing 10#. Series ass kicking on a 7 wt. Not sure if that goes on any more.

Striking a balance can be difficult, sometimes impossible in our polarized society. Lake fertilization for sockeye production has been going on in BC and AK since the 80s, maybe even late 70s. It's a science, but not quite rocket science. Because Baker Lake is oligotrophic (low fertility), the Baker relicensing settlement agreement includes the possibility of lake fertilization to further enhance sockeye production. Because of the potential for negative PR, PSE wanted nothing to do with it, so it was left to the tribes to undertake it if it is deemed beneficial and desirable. But since the reservoir, combined with Lake Shannon, has produced up to one million sockeye and coho smolts combined, I think the stakeholders are pretty well satisfied without going the fertilization route. There is no end of parties, including WDOE, who would abhore such deliberate "pollution" of a relatively sterile lake. And since a Sec. 401 water quality certification from WDOE would be necessary, I'm doubtful that the fishery groups will push for it.

I was at a meeting discussing water quality. IF the Redfish Lake ID sockeye were restored to pre-overfishing the water clarity would drop because of carcasses. WADOE said, in their view, to prevent recovery since other recreationists valued clear water over fish. As Salmo says, competing interests.

04/24/2022

As someone, who rode the ferry across Lake Washington, to Kirkland, and then help break in "the old floating bridge, clean water was the preferred option.

Sail boats, power boats, houses built very close to the lake shores, swimming, water skiing, etc. I had a half brother, that lived on the Western shore of the lake, it was neat to go to his dock and swim......that was nice!!!!!

While fishing is important to many on this site.....when you take the persons that live on the Island, and most of the communities that ring the lake.....fishing is just not a high priority.

So, the competition of a clean water and workingly stable environmental resource and the myriad of species that can support vs. the prolification of a introduced, and forefor invasive species to a body of water for the value of a never-to-be-seen rec fishery due to in-watershed issues and ocean survival.

Meanwhile spending a sh!t ton of money to pay me and West Fork Environmental to go collect carcasses at 32/hr....


...so much for wdfw wages...

Making Lake Washington dirty again won’t fix the Sockeye problem.

Sockeye do best with a 3-4 year cycle of high and low abundance. This allows for predator and prey abundances to fluctuate which produces the typical 4 year high/low cycle of high Sockeye returns. The hatchery in Lake Washington should mimic that cycle instead of dumping high numbers of sockeye every year which sustains a continuous abundance of high predator and low abundance of preferred forage species. The current program obviously is resulting in a long-term low return situation each year.

There are a huge number of introduced species in Lake Wa. Sockeye do best where the mix of interacting species is low. This high introduced species situation creates a complex system that is very difficult to manage. Not much that can be done about that.

So…..My suggestion would be to try releasing high numbers of hatchery sockeye every 4 years, and release few or none following the high release years. This would mimic how Sockeye do best naturally.

The cyclic dominance feature in sockeye seems generally confined to the Fraser. It may well be tied to predators but is likely more complex than that. Each lake is different up there and even though you see a difference between each of four years it is not all the lakes high and low together. Even in the off year you have hugh returns. The rest of the sockeye world is more stable.

It is at least theoretically possible to plant one year high if you could get the eggs, which aren't there. But, the predators (if that was the cause) would need to crash in off-cycle years and those exotic predators evolved to utilize consistent food sources so I doubt they'd even notice the changes in sockeye numbers.

Tommy Edmondson, the limnologist who provided a lots of the LW data to not only push clean up but to show how it worked has gone on record as (back in the 90s) suggesting LW sockeye needed some more nutrients.

There are simply too many competitors and predators in the lake now. Unless you want be the public face on a rotenone project to clean out it and Sammamish........

So they use Baker lake eggs in Lake Washington?

Eggs from Baker were the source of the Cedar sockeye.

Last year it looks like they got 38k back.
Anyone know the total fry plants those adult return numbers were based off of?
SF

I do not know what portion of the 38K return is from hatchery releases. Releases coming back as 3 and 5 yr olds in 2021 numbered about 4.3M each. The 4yr old release was about 6.9M. Nearly all of these were reported as "emergent fry" in RMPC.org, the coastwise salmonid release database.

The plan, when I was involved in LW, was to release fry as soon as they emerged. Essentially provide fry to replace the wild spawners prevented from passing above the Landsburg Dam. Have minimal hatchery experience and modification. Since then, I know there was an effort at some short term (1-week or so) feeding to enhance survival.

I think the original law was for something on the order or 30-40M fry (mitigation for 200K spawners). Current releases are a drop in the bucket, but current returns are so small that egg-take is constrained.