While standing along the river, waiting for the next fish to bite, I, as I am sure most of you, have wondered: “What happens to the next generation of fish, if their parents are the ones with neither curiosity nor aggression that swam by all of the lures of the fishers, and meekly lined up in the hatchery channel to wait their turn to be milked and squeezed for eggs”. If there is a genetic component to the tendency for a fish to bite, and we are catching the vast majority of the willing biters out of the population, won’t the next generation have a reduced tendency to bite?

Another question: If the more vigorous fish out of a population are more likely to act aggressively, and therefore bite more readily, won’t these be naturally the first ones caught? Won’t this leave fewer to spawn that possess that genetic vigor? Will the end result be a bunch of Milque-Toast meekfish which would be no fun to catch, even if they would bite?

A couple years back, I hooked and landed a buck, and not wanting to make him part of my limit, released him. A few minutes later, I hooked another fish that did not fight very hard, which looked identical to the earlier fish. I released him also. I caught and kept a nice hen soon after, and then within a half hour, hooked and released the same buck. He could barely swim, but I held him for several minutes in the current until he swam off. Not wanting to endanger this fish anymore, I moved down river and fished for an hour or so before fishing a hole upriver from where I first caught that buck. Needless to say, he had swam up into the new hole, and bit again. Once again, and luckily, I was able to revive him. I quit for the day, in awe of the spirit and tenacity of that buck steelhead. I regret unintentionally exhausting that fish for my own amusement. Even more, I regret that I was unable to ensure his survival until he could reproduce and pass on his extraordinary tendency to bite a lure.

Proposal:
Only spawn fish that have returned to the hatchery with a hook in their jaw, or that have been caught on hook and line, and kept alive by fishers that would be willing to donate or trade their catch for the good of future generations of fish and fishers. If a fisher brings in a healthy, live steelhead in a cooler of water, trade him for one of the fish that zipped upriver and didn’t get caught. Sell the rest of the fish that return unscathed for cat food. Or give them to the Indians for their subsistence quota. Since the number of fish needed for hatchery eggs is relatively small compared to the total number of returning fish, this seems feasible to me. I think something similar to this is taking place on some rivers in the northwest with the broodstock programs, but why not do it at all of the hatcheries?
Comments?

I'll have to look thru the boxes in the attic but somewhere I've got a report on a WDF program in the 70's that selected for so called biters in their Puget Sound Blackmouth enhancement efforts.

Gooose

Or what about this logic....the fat healthy brats that return are the ones that weren't shy about getting what they needed to survive, i.e., they didn't go hungry. I figure if they eat well, they'll take a properly presented lure/bait.

IOW, the ones that return are already predisposed to aggression and healthy eating habits, so we should be fine.

Make sense? Or perhaps do aggression in the river and chasing down food in the salt not necessarily go hand in hand?

Snap',

That theory has been mulled over for many years now. It has a significant basis except for an important factor - selective evolution takes much much longer to make real behavior gene changes than the few decades that hatchery fish have been around. However, I'm not so sure it hasn't made a slight difference.

We have changed the behavior patterns of hunted deer and elk over the last couple hundred years; but I doubt that's genuine genetic evolution, just more a behavior taught by the parent deer and elk. Hatchery fish can't teach their offspring not to bite, as the mammals can teach their offspring to hide.

As for using hooked 'biters' for hatchery brood stock, that's the trend in Oregon via the many growing brood stock programs; in which trained volunteers catch native steelhead and put them in live wells to take to the hatchery for brood stock. Maybe in addition to keeping planted steelhead to the genetics indigenous to the river better intact, it may also help to breed better biting brats. But I kind of doubt it. The more likely difference is that nates had to bite quickly and often from the fingerling to smolt stage in the rivers and carry that trait back from the ocean again, as compared to hatchery feed fingerling/smolts. But most of us have caught and continue to catch too many brats for me to believe any significant evolution has taken place - yet. My 0.02 opinion.

RT

This discussion is predicated on one basic assumption - that the propensity to strike a lure is genetically determined. That assumption is hardly a scientific fact.

Conversely, it could be that all salmon/steelhead have roughly the same genetic disposition towards lures but their reaction is caused primarily by environmental factors such as water temperature, physical condition of the fish, light levels, diurnal behavioral patterns, or, in the case of steelhead, nutritional deprivation (i.e, they're hungry).

Regardless of the reason, I wouldn't worry too much about breeding or, more likely, harvesting the aggressiveness out of the fish. They still have to eat, live, and grow in a very difficult environment (the ocean). To do this, they must have a considerable amount of aggression towards potential food items (shrimp, herring, smelt, etc). Otherwise, they won't be around long enough to return to spawn.

Wouldn't it be cool if they could breed salmon/steelies using genes from piranhas?

cohohanger,

I wish I could remember the specifics of this but, I know scientific studies have been done on bass (Yes, I know a bass isn't a steelhead) but they have shown that the offsping of aggressive biting bass are consistantly better biters than the offsring of the non-biters.

Reminds me of a theory I heard about pheasants.
This theory was that we were shooting all the birds that were inclined to fly when spooked and the only ones left were the runners.
These runners offspring supposedly are inclined to run as well.
Not sure if it's valid but it sounds good.

Yes.

We need the game department to start over and add some fresh native genes to the hatchery pool...
Keith