I've always wondered about the patterns of the Quinault broodstock that get raised in the lake pens.

The guides fish them right up to the outlet of the lake this time of year. Where do those fish go? Do they return to the pen area of the lake and just mill around? Or is there an intake at the building by those pens, and the fish swim up it and thus can be stripped/spawned there?

Do any of them head up river? I know a few fish went past Reiter on the Sky, but it was a tiny fraction of the overall hatchery run.

In the past, I've caught a couple hatchery fish way up the in the Q forks in the fall. It was after the first heavy rains, so sort of assume they were way up in the system in the summer and then were working back down with the higher water. Assume they were pen raised fish from the lake, but I guess it's possible they were strays from other systems.

I think the steelhead on the Qin are all reared at the Fed Hatchery at Cook Creek. Some may be net pen released but I think the stock is Cook Creek.

I got a tour quite a few years ago of the facility in the lake where they held net caught broodstock. A tribal member was an employee of the the tribe at the time, and was freinds with my nephew. They would string a gillnet out from the shore in front of the facility. I forget where it was exactly located, but was in between the Lodge and the lake outlet. Long net couple hundred yards long. He would be on watch, looking out the facility bay windows at the net with bino's. When cork floats started bobbing with a fish entering the net he would race down to the boat ready on shore, and run out to capture live, the tangled fish. A 55 gal drum on the boat had fresh water in it to dump the fish in, run to shore, then transport the fish up to tanks at the facility. While we were there, a fish came into the net and we got to participate. The fish were stored in plywood covered takes indoors in the basment of that facility. He told a story one time when the tanks were left uncovered and someone came in after dark and turned the lights on. Fish bolted out of the tanks with the light shock, and big steelhead were flopping on the ground everywhere. They never kept any fish there, under 15# to use as there broodstock. That's why the Quinault R. winter steelhead are some of the largest in the state. I think they were reared at the Cook Crk. facility, then released in the Quinault , Queets and Slamon rivers. Never could figure out why local broodstock programs, that were in action on many rivers in the late 70's and 80's are not being conducted any more. But that's another converstion.

Remember that in the 70s and 80s WDG was license funded. They didn't get GF monies. They were very tight with money and it probably made more economic sense to have a mother station (Skamania and Chambers) and move fish around to grow out. Only one site needed all of the incubation and early rearing infrastructure. At that time everybody knew a fish was a fish was a fish.

Also, especially for Chambers, spawning had been advanced to the point that getting yearling smolts was fairly easy. Wild broodstock spawned later and so it would be harder to get a smolt to size without considerable investment in warmer water.

If the fish were hatched/reared at Cook Creek, they wouldn't head up to the lake this time of year, would they?

That's why I wondered if they return to the pen area and just mill around? Makes sense the fishery workers could put out a long net and then run them into the facility...

Not sure about steelhead but coho are programmed to migrate as far upstream as possible to seed as many river miles as possible. Since steelhead have a similar life history in that they rear for more than a year in freshwater that they may also migrate upstream as far as possible. Many/most may go to the stream they smolted from a significant amount may move throughout the watershed.

Is that right? I thought the vast majority of hatchery fish head right back to the water they imprinted on...

I remember quite a few years ago, the state used to broodstock steelhead on the Satsop. Volunteer fishermen would fish for the wild fish late in the season and keep them alive in large PVC tubes tethered to the side of the boat. You would see the tubes laying in areas along the bank for the fishermen to pick up. The smolts from these fish were adiposed clipped. I remember seeing a clipped fish in the old Fishing and Hunting News that an angler caught that was over 30 lbs. Oregon still has a popular broodstock steelhead program. It has been very successful. Didn't the Sol Duc also have a steelhead broodstock program that was discontinued fairly recently?

Runngun is largely correct. However, Cook Creek hatchery and Lake Quinault operate as separate programs. It's been 10 years or more since I toured the facility. Cook Creek is a US Fish & Wildlife Service hatchery and funded through USFWS. Lk Quinault is tribally run. Cook Creek began with Chambers Ck fish, but may have switched over the years. I don't know. Lk Q uses native broodstock from the Q River, collected as RnG described. They have incubation and early juvenile rearing in the lakeside building. Fingerling steelhead are transferred into the net pens in the lake. I believe they operate the Chinook program the same way.

The lake program is not without its problems. Lake surface water temperatures get very warm in late summer through fall, and fish disease issues proliferate. Juvenile Chinook and steelhead losses average around 50%. That is way higher than in traditional hatchery environments with cooler water. The Tribe's approach has been to just take a lot more eggs and raise a lot more juveniles to compensate for the disease mortality. That can be a good way to go when you're spending OPM (Other People's Money).

As for the returning adults, they enter Lk Q and mill around the net pen area - it smells like home because it is home. I have heard that some of those fish pass through the lake and enter the upper Q. That makes sense because that also happens with net pen programs elsewhere. However I have fished the upper Q quite a few times in search of those hatchery strays and have yet to catch one.

The Lk Q steelhead program selects 3-salt adults as broodstock. That is why the returning adults are of larger average size than most programs that use typical returns which are 2-salt fish. A friend and I fished the lower Q with a Tribal guide a couple years ago, and we each caught steelhead that were about 12 pounds.

Late 70's early 80's their were quite a few volunteer broodstock programs going on. 3 that I remember are the Green, Snider crk on the Sol Duc and Puyallup. I volenteered on the Puyallup/Carbon program 1980-83, before it was terminated. The Puyallup chapter of NW Steelheaders of TU were the volunteers that line caught, tube staged, and helped collect and transport them to the Clarks Crk trout hatchery for spawning/raising. The hatchery manager Fred... can't remember his last name, and another staffer steered the program. We fished and caught wilds in April when everything was closed. Pissed many off that we got to fish on them. One club member and fellow fisherman, Brian Phinny..sp. protested the taking of these wilds off the spawning beds enough for WDG to terminate the program. The Sol Duc program was terminated a number of years ago. I think the Green still has one going. The Muckleshoot tribe has one ongoing on the White/Stuck. Too bad more are not in operation.

That was the Snyder Creek program. It got discontinued when they made the Sol Duc a gene bank stream. I caught some nice fish out of that program. I thought they were going to relocate the program to the Bogey, but I’m not sure if that happened or not.

As far as the Quinault goes, it seemed the average fish on Cook creek was smaller than on the Salmon and at the lake. As Sg mentioned, I believe they use different stocks which would explain the size difference, but that may have also changed since the was last out that way.
SF

Yep, I know Rich Underwood always made fun of small ones as being "Cook Creek fish" vs the larger fish returning to the lake.