Someone told me that the hatchery at fortson is not in use anymore. Is this right? Thanks for the info, it would explain why last year was so poor up there.

The Stillaguamish steelhead fishing as been deteriorating for several years now. True, they are not planting any more Skamania steelhead in the Stilly. WDF&W is also monitoring the recovery of the original Deer Creek population of natives very closely (and they are coming back).
The Stilly has a long way to go before it will ever be the river we all remember in the 50s and 60s. Siltation from Deer Creek and sometimes Boulder River, and the huge slide at Hazel really have silted up the spawning areas.
In time, provided the watersheds are protected, the Stilly could clear out the silt and regain some of its lost glory. The gully-washer rains we're getting this season will clear out some of the sediment.
In the short term though, you are correct. It has not been very good of late, at least not like I remember it. And...as a note of comparison, it took an eight year closure for the middle fork of the Eel River in northern California (a one-time fabulous producer of steelhead) to clear up and begin to rebuild a healthy run of wild steelhead again. The Eel now has a catch-and-release season open through the winter and I'm told fishing is pretty darned good.

Les Johnson

After reading Les' remarks, I called him, then I called Curt Kraemer to get the information from the horse's mouth. I then called Les back and got his permission to post a retraction. After the funding crisis of a couple of years ago (if you count them as they go by), the North Puget Sound summer steelhead program is (at least for the time being) funded. The facility at Whitehorse on the North Fork of the Stilly is a rearing facility, not a hatchery. All of the NPS rearing facilities (Palmer-Kanaskat and Tokul Creek as well), incuding Whitehorse, receive their fish from the Reiter Ponds hatchery. This strain of fish can no longer be typified as Skamania fish, but are a rather highly-mongrelized strain, most of the eggs coming from fish netted out of the South Fork of the Skykomish below Sunset Falls. These fish have been naturalized over a good many years and are now showing a lot of variation from their original Skamania parentage; they spawn later and have less tendency to come back as three-salt fish; most returning as one- or two-salts. True, two years ago there were no summer-run smolts released from the Whitehorse facility, but last spring 95,000 were; this is still somewhat down from the usual 120,000-130,000 of past years.

[ 12-03-2001: Message edited by: Preston Singletary ]

Preston-
I really appreciate the update. There were many rumors going around about the status of the Whitehorse hatchery. Thank you very much for the clarification!!

Thanks for the info, Preston. What, in your opinion, would be the possibility of getting answers to a few questions: What is the predicted fate of the Whitehorse facility, and of the hatchery program on the Stilly in general? Last summer made me think some entities would just as soon see the river dry up and blow away. Will the smolt plants continue to decline? Or is there a chance strong returns will mean strong plants? Will budget cuts eventually claim the Whithorse scalp? Given meagre returns and lax enforcement, what is the future of the Stilly fishery?

Are these questions with answers, or am I barking up the wrong fork?

I thank Preston for correcting my erronious answer. However, I still believe that there is hope for the Stillaguamish River in the future if some of its scars are allowed to heal. It will take a long time and will require sensible ongoing hatchery support to maintain a decent summer fishery.
Keep it in mind that there are really no short-term answers to most of our state steelhead problems. Over the long haul saving as many of our native steelhead as we can along with an overhaul of the hatchery systems will be the best thing for our fish -- and that will automatically make it the best thing for our fishermen.

Les Johnson

When I talked to Curt, he said that funding for Reiter Ponds and its satellite rearing facilities is now a regular part of the WDFW's budget request. I see that the latest round of emergency cuts does affect a couple of hatchery programs, but not Reiter, et. al.
Note: The reason that the Whitehorse Rearing Ponds did not produce any summer-run smolts and that none were planted in the North Fork of the Stilly two years ago, while they WERE reared and planted in the Sky, Snoqualmie and Green, was that there was no outcry from the fly fishing community when the cuts were announced! If you don't speak up you don't get a piece of the pie!
The run of wild native summer-runs that spawn in Deer Creek seems to be down from the approximately 1000 of a couple of years ago to about 500, still well above the lows of the '80s and early '90s.

Thanks for the info. How about any winter fish? South fork had clipped fish around red bridge in Oct. Lost fish from masonics on c creek?