Lol so now it's bad to have a retirement package?
GFY


Love how WDFW is viewed by many here as operating with conspiracy and this and that...like the 2500+ person workforce would be able to hold the lie that long and not sell out to one of you all the industry secrets....even the Trump administration couldn't hold a lie that long, but yet this dept yal call inept supposedly can?
Maybe some of you aren't catching fish anymore because you've finally just become too facking dumb.

It is kinda hard to catch fish when pretty much everything is closed down.

And everything is closed down because our fish managers have and have been allowed to fail.

Failure is now an acceptable goal at most agencies in Washington.
In the real world if you fail there are consequences.

Amazing to me that some say they will just go fish on Idaho's fish. Won't be long until the Columbia basin is the new Chehalis.

Zero consequences and still cashing checks

WDFW X 1 = 0
I'm afraid that day at college that they issued to budding fish biologist that magic wand that would produce steelhead out of nothing I played hooky to go steelhead fishing!

Speaking of the real world - at some point each of us will have to face the reality that we collectively have failed the resource by insisting that we can have both our cake and eat it. With failing freshwater and marine water ecosystems and society unwilling to make the sacrifices required for meaningful restoration extinction of the resource we all care so much about has become the only option.

Curt

To echo Smalma, if you read Aldo Leopold, especially Sand County Almanac, you will see that even in the 30s and 40s he recognized that the "ecologist" and "manager" faced a world that was being systematically destroyed by society's drive to consume.

My best supervisor, or at least the one that kicked me in the *ss and got me to write things for which my career suffered, said that all the biologists were doing was managing the rate of extinction. He was, and is, right because society doesn't give a rip.

I 100% agree with both of you.
Bankruptcy and extinction is the goal.
and
We have all contributed.

Well keep on working until it's your turn to also get that monthly Sociable Security check. But since you keep trying to make this personal, why don't you list the actions I did in my career that caused this failure of which you speak? Double-dog-dare-ya'.

Everything is a conspiracy when you don't understand how anything works.

Fish on...

Todd

It’s also where we finally realized that what we paid for all these years with our licenses, tags, and punchcards, was nothing more than funding “studies” , position papers, and PP presentations telling us why there will be no more hatchery fish, while quietly closing down all the wild steelhead opportunity statewide beginning in January.

Much of money spent on studies was from grants and not from the Wildlife Fund.

The fact of the matter is that there are plenty of simpletons who think if we just plant more, we'll have good fisheries.

How many dollars per fish do you think the taxpayer ought to shell out for you to get your hatchery fish on?

$50? $150?

I bet you right now it's a LOT more than that...socialism at its finest.

You want to go catch a $300 hatchery fish? Buy a $300 tag.

Fish on...

Todd

In an EIS that WDFW did in 1992 or 93, they listed the cost as $25 to put a hatchery steelhead in the recreational creel with 50:50 treaty : non-treaty sharing. Obviously it would be a lot more today, even if SAR rates were the same. But we know the return rates have dropped. So the cost is spinning out of control high today.

Sorry you feel that way.
I have zero interest in talking to your past colleagues just to air dirty laundry here.

If only one person was to blame it would be a far easier fix.

World please take note.......
I'm not singling out Salmo.
It took many past generations to ruin the steelhead fishing in the Chehalis system.

Turn the whole thing over to the native Americans. At least they know how to return fish while the white man seems quite good at coming up with excuses.

Ha!
Run the plant totals and returns

Because that's a bald faced lie when you look at the facts.

White man plant chit.
The truth.

not sure where you all are getting your numbers for the price of the fish, but it aint right...

take the 4 million fish they "saved" at the Nooksack hatchery, if each one of those fish is say 30 dollars, thats 120 million right there alone, at only 1 hatchery, and there are 72 hatcheries that produce salmon and steelhead, and i think 16 for trout...

they have an operating budget of around 400 million (07-09), there is no way that 1 hatchery that doesnt even produce returns takes up almost 1/3 of the operating budget of the entire state...

also, the Blue Creek pens are still empty, and they have like 12 fish back...

Cold hard facts on Hatchery Nooksack Steelhead Plants for this year's return.

89,000 fish planted for 2021/2022 return.
74 adult fish are forecasted to return.
14 have returned as of most current counts on 12/13/21

If each smolt costs just .25 cents to raise & release, (which is probably WAY under cost), each fish ends up being:

If 74 fish return as predicted: $300 each fish
Of the 14 currently being held: $1,589 each fish

Most likely these fish cost .50 cents or more so double my figures . And most importantly, the fishery is closed to all fishing to protect these fish so they can get back to the hatchery.

Plant more fish? Sure, but put them in the lakes and alpine lakes where allowed. It would be a hell of a lot more enjoyable than what we have now.

The economic report in the link for the NW Power Council in 2009 says that cost per smolt produced in Columbia Basin facilities were coho at 35cts, fall Chinook 10Cts, Sp Chinook 60cts, chum 10cts, and steelhead $1.30.

https://www.nwcouncil.org/sites/default/files/ieab2009_2.pdf

The costs of raising fish varies among the hatcheries. Some hatcheries have good quality water delivered by gravity, and some hatcheries have to pump all of their water supply which understandably costs a lot more. I think Darth's figure from the NWPC of $1.30 per steelhead smolt is a good average for 2009. I think we all know that costs haven't gone down in the last dozen years.

Using the 2009 value, at $1.30 per smolt, the Nooksack steelhead smolts cost $115,700 for 89,000 smolts. If 74 adult fish return, then they cost us $1,563.51 each. So this is what it is costing us taxpayers and license buyers to operate a hatchery steelhead program that provides us with exactly zero fishing. How much more would anyone here like to spend in order to not fish?

Salmo,
Do we know how the cost is broke down. Take the Nooksack hatchery. If the hard costs are paid for and the maintenance and basic operation is fairly static, then we have to look and see how much per smolt is left. Obviously the cost per smolt could drop significantly as the numbers go up. The next question is what would happen if they raised several million and started dropping a few thousand a day, almost from incubation, spreading them out over the river. How many would survive and what would the cost be? While the numbers may not work in the Nooksack, it they may start to make a difference in other rivers.

Clearly, dropping then number of smolt in a hatchery will greatly increase the cost per smolt. The question is, what is the perfect number and has anyone tried to figure it out.