one can raise steelhead in a plastic swimming pool fed with a garden hose,, you just need the trout food and the fry,, its not even that hard to spawn your own fish and incubate your own eggs... Seen several fish farms in operation when I was a kid,, "Trout Farms",, they yousto be all over the place...

chit,, most of the high schools that had creeks on their property had a fish hatchery back in the day,, there was one on Chimicum creek for years,, I remember releasing smolt when I was in 1st grade...

10/24/2025

The "hand writing was on the wall" when State Combined, the 2 State agencies that made decisions on any fish in WA State, and then made most of the Top management personnel from the Salmon agency.

It's been a "down hill spiral", for Steelhead since then.....

1994 - Legislature merges Department of Wildlife and Department of Fisheries, creating the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, with a nine-member commission and a director appointed by the Commission.

Grrrrrrrrrrr

While I agree with Drifter on the result of merger I believed at the time that it was good idea. It was supposed to remove day to day politics from management. It put the WDG/WDW management paradigm (Commission/Commission appointed Director) in place. Having worked in both agencies I supported that.

From the inside one thing that I noticed in the merger was that WDW did no preparation, no planning for how the future agency would look. It's like "if you don't vote don't complain about the results". But it was glaringly obvious that salmon won and every other fish lost.

When merger occurred, I was in the Hatcheries part of WDF. That integration was done by throwing out the organization plans of both agencies and coming up with a whole new form. It also included significant restructuring of pay levels and such. I know that a lot of the workers weren't happy with the new form but I think it ws the way to go. Whole new organization, whole new way of doing business, etc. Not forcing one side to adopt the other's ways.

It was also noted, though, that these agency mergers finally succeed when all the pre-merger staff has retired or otherwise left the building.

Ya, the whole new way of business that screwed the steelhead and steelhead angling. I remember they started to combine salmon and steelhead at the same hatcheries after the merger. Prior, all were separate. I thought that was biologically not possible? They moved steelhead rearing on the Puy Carbon, from the Clark's creek facility, to Voights creek salmon hatchery. The hatchery returns were never the same after that, and got to a point where hardly any came back at all. Led to the elimination of the steelhead program and closure for winter steelhead. I often wondered if it was a coincidence/conspiracy, or just the beginning of survival issues state wide, West coast wide? Very very sad.

And you all will just take it,, accept it while you keep participating in rigged elections that install the same cocksuckers that screwed you,, and you wonder how this keeps happening?

It keeps happening because you are lazy and refuse to accept responsibility,, refuse to take matters into your own hands.. Slaves ruled by idiots who are taking orders/instructions from a higher level of idiots...

You can rear them together. In fact, there was a program (clandestine) that reared summers and coho in the same raceways. Worked very well.

The problem, I believe, when they started to rear steelhead at surface water stations (salmon) is thatchy water is colder, lots colder. Prior to merger, steelhead were spawned, incubated, and often reared on ground water which is warmer. They evolved, genetically, to function in warmer water. Put them into the much colder surface water and the enzyme systems don't work so they don't perform well. Taken long enough, they can evolve back to the colder water.

RG. I'm going rouge. How about you? Interesting about the cooler water rearing issue? Could that be a smolt survival issue on top of all the other obstacles to get steelhead to return?

What else would you expect from a democrat run state.
They have ruined Seattle and Olympia as well.

While I won't belittle the ocean mortality issue I think a bigger one is that steelhead have very poor R/S for survival to first time spawners, I have never seen a compete data set (count escapement, age for all adults) where the R/S even averaged 1.0. Repeat s[pawners are required.

That means that any steelhead killed on their first return fisheries are also not returning in subsequent years.

Data from both BC and WA showed that as the smolt age lowers you get a better R/S. The =1.0 is about at a mean smolt age of 1.5. To get age 1 smolts, as BC showed, you need the nutrients in the streams. They did it with fertilizers and then pinks. You also got more smolts when the smolts are younger. Finally, the experiments showed that they got sustainable returns in the fertilized stream even in years of poor ocean survival in neighboring streams.

This data has been around for 30 years or more; but since the easiest solution to nutrient delivery is spawning salmon it is DOA.

The pink runs state wide the past 10 yrs have been over the top! You would think stream nutrient delivery would be at it's peak. Repeat spawners should be available more than ever inside Puget Sound, with all the closures. Predators must be the smoking gun! Get rid of cormorants and pinnipeds and watch what happens. But! That will never happen for the poor old steelhead. Nobody cares enough to do anything other than close hatcheries, because steelhead cost to much all the way around. Proud to have them be our state fish.

You know another problem is the creeks are full of [Bleeeeep!] these days and the fish cannot get above the obstacles.. For instance the creek I live on,, we have not had Coho or Cutthroat for about 5 years,,, the valley below me is now full of beaver ponds and willows and the fish can no longer make it up... So most of the habitat is not being used... Farmers and private land owners yousto clean out the creek and the fish could make it all the way to the headwaters,, not anymore,, its totally blocked and the cutthroat cant even make it...

Sounds like my place and the little creek running through !

“ fish can no longer make it up... So most of the habitat is not being used... Farmers and private land owners yousto clean out the creek and the fish could make it all the way to the headwaters,, not anymore,, its totally bblocked and the cutthroat cant even make it “

Same stupid story, same stupid results. And that’s after we restored and preserved our creek’s run thru the property, While the state and county let the rest of the creek above and below, including state and county property go to reed grass, siltation, blackberry, drug camps, and the end of the creek.”

Now , Wild Coho, Chum, Cutthroat, and the Rainbow are nearly all gone, and it only took 20 years, the last twenty...

The numbers of pinks we get, only ever other year, are really nowhere near what is needed. Researchers have seen pretty good results with 0.6 Kg of spawners per square metre of stream. The benefit climbed steeply to about 1.9 and then the benefits slow, but don't stop.

Although I know it's bigger, let's say the Skagit is 100km long and averages 30m wide. I know this is a significant underestimate but that gives 3 million square metres. At 2kg per pink that would be 1.5 million spawners to half hit the need. Now calculate this for the other salmon species. We're nowhere close.

Carcassman,,

Natural abundance,, carrying capacity means,, especially for pinks,, sockey and chum that there are so many fish they are digging up each others reds to spawn,, that they are pushing each other out onto the bank while moving upstream...

Imagine how many steelhead stayed resident when the rivers were producing natural abundance,, so much food,, we must have had 30 inch resident rainbows/steelhead in all our rivers... Also we must have had tidewater steelhead/rainbows that never went far from the mouth of the river..

Our rivers in Washington have the potential to support salmon/steelhead/trout runs 12 months of the year,, much better river conditions than Alaska...

Imagine what it was like prior to 1870? I bet there were so many fish that the whole of puget sound stunk like rotten salmon for 9 months of the year... Every creek and river plugged with several species and mass trout populations to feed off the aftermath...

I bet it was several times over what Kamchatka or the west side of Kodiak can produce...

Puget Sound was a Salmon/Steelhead/trout factory prior to 1870... Indians had killed off all the brown bears 10 thousand years earlier... Imagine how big those bears were,, way bigger than Kodiak bears or plains bears,,, mass food year round and no hibernation....

I doubt the Indians had killed off the grizzlies 10K YBP because the glaciers were still retreating from the Sound. But, yeah, I am pretty sure the number of fish was astounding.

Some bottom sampling was done on Karluk Lake, on Kodiak I. in AK. They were able to reconstruct sockeye escapements from about 0CE. The lowest runs were in the fist millennium (about 400,000 escapement) and around the 15-1600s I think the hit 4 million. Now, managers tell us the lake capacity is 1-2 million spawners.

For those who like steelhead fishing look at Kamchatka and then look at the salmon runs there, Even with occasional poaching problems the Russians are intentionally targeting some pretty sweet ecological levels of escapement for all species.

I fished the Karluk in Sept 2000,, Flew in on a Helicopter and stayed a week in a tent camp... There were so many fish you were sick of catching them by the 3rd day... We were there to catch Steelhead probably only caught 15 or so the whole trip... But it was non stop catching Char and Sockeye.. Very aggressive Sockeye in there,, they actually look like a cross between Sockeye and Chum... The Silvers were just starting to come in,, big Silvers that are orange like a pumpkin and covered in sea lice... I actually did not land any Silvers but I had some on,,, they just would bust you off,, over 20 pounds is common... Using a 7 weight with a floating line/split shot bouncing egg patterns with a tinny nymph dropper so essentially drift fishing... Its a shallow river bout the size of the Dungeness,, too shallow and slow for drift fishing,, probably could fish spinners and spoons a little...

It was unreal,, never saw anything like it regarding the volume of fish...