#1058658 - 01/05/22 01:23 PM
Re: chehalis river - any state wildlife agents here
[Re: Todd]
|
Repeat Spawner
Registered: 08/02/12
Posts: 1052
Loc: In a drift boat...
|
Everything is a conspiracy when you don't understand how anything works.
Fish on...
Todd Spot on. Saving this one. Couldn't have said it better.
_________________________
YOUR MOTHER IS A TULE!
|
Top
|
|
|
|
#1058660 - 01/05/22 04:56 PM
Re: chehalis river - any state wildlife agents here
[Re: larryb]
|
River Nutrients
Registered: 11/21/07
Posts: 7441
Loc: Olema,California,Planet Earth
|
Th state tried to release steelhead at all sorts of times and sizes. What worked was age-1 large smolts in the spring. I think May release. That is what brought back fishable numbers of adults.
|
Top
|
|
|
|
#1058664 - 01/06/22 09:25 AM
Re: chehalis river - any state wildlife agents here
[Re: larryb]
|
River Nutrients
Registered: 03/08/99
Posts: 13526
|
Krijack,
The Department has cost information for each hatchery, so total costs per hatchery can be calculated. Each hatchery records the number of pounds of fish produced. From that, the cost per pound is calculated. Juvenile steelhead are usually raised to about six per pound, so divide the cost per pound by six and we have the cost per smolt.
Hatchery costs per unit production are usually lower at the largest hatcheries. It's that economy of scale thing. Hatchery capacity is determined by the volume of water flow available, measured either as gallons per minute or CFS (cubic feet per second) and by the number of cubic feet of rearing pond space that is available.
As C'man pointed out, releasing pre-smolt hatchery steelhead is pretty much a waste of money due to the near zero survival. There is an exception that has been tried for restoring or enhancing some wild steelhead populations. The juvenile fish are reared to a size of roughly 400 per pound and then released in unseeded habitat. But you can't just dump a truckload of fed fry into the stream and have this work. You have to dip fry into buckets and have technicians and biologists literally scatter the fry, 10 to 20 at a time, into small units of suitable habitat, or niches. I can tell you that stocking 20,000 fry this way is a hella' lotta' work and therefore, very expensive. From an effort like this, about the highest survival to smolt stage is 3%. No one has figured out how to make this an economically or biologically effective program.
|
Top
|
|
|
|
#1058671 - 01/06/22 11:50 AM
Re: chehalis river - any state wildlife agents here
[Re: larryb]
|
River Nutrients
Registered: 11/21/07
Posts: 7441
Loc: Olema,California,Planet Earth
|
The one, and maybe only one, think a hatchery is good at is producing more fish per unit of water can than the wild. Some is obviously management, but the Hood Canal hatcheries produced was more chum, for example, than the whole Skagit. You can and do crowd the fish in a hatchery, make sure they have food, medicate them, protect them form predators, and so on. If bare numbers are all that is important to you, or developing the heck out of watersheds, then a hatchery works.
Like Salmo said, successfully planting fry requires vacant water and lots of handwork. Been there, done that, and even with hand scatter planting the production was close to zip.
|
Top
|
|
|
|
#1058678 - 01/06/22 06:56 PM
Re: chehalis river - any state wildlife agents here
[Re: 5 * General Evo]
|
It all boils down to this - I'm right, everyone else is wrong, and anyone who disputes this is clearly a dumbfuck.
Registered: 03/07/99
Posts: 17149
Loc: SE Olympia, WA
|
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... Nobody said a fish in the hatchery cost $30, they said bringing an adult fish to the table cost $30, or 40 or whatever it was - and they aren't close to meaning the same thing. You tried, though.
_________________________
She was standin' alone over by the juke box, like she'd something to sell. I said "baby, what's the goin' price?" She told me to go to hell.
Bon Scott - Shot Down in Flames
|
Top
|
|
|
|
#1058679 - 01/06/22 07:16 PM
Re: chehalis river - any state wildlife agents here
[Re: Todd]
|
Repeat Spawner
Registered: 12/06/07
Posts: 1388
|
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 Funny thing is. I would now gladly pay $300 for an opportunity tag a season, to swing a fly a couple of weeks CnR, on a couple of my local PS rivers, Feb. through April. Lots cheaper than travelling to Russia for a fix. Oh wait! The tribes won't let us even consider that!
Edited by RUNnGUN (01/06/22 07:19 PM)
_________________________
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller. Don't let the old man in!
|
Top
|
|
|
|
#1058685 - 01/06/22 10:51 PM
Re: chehalis river - any state wildlife agents here
[Re: Salmo g.]
|
Ornamental Rice Bowl
Registered: 11/24/03
Posts: 12767
|
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 g hits ANOTHER one outta the park.... J F C ! Funding hatchery programs that operate only for the sake of continuing operations... with ZERO benefit accruing to the user group for which they were intended. Sorry, but that's just dummer'N'hell. Is that just a blue state thing?
_________________________
"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey) "If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman) The Keen Eye MDLong Live the Kings!
|
Top
|
|
|
|
#1058700 - 01/07/22 02:32 PM
Re: chehalis river - any state wildlife agents here
[Re: larryb]
|
Three Time Spawner
Registered: 12/29/99
Posts: 1611
Loc: Vancouver, Washington
|
Fish Doc - You know better than most folks on this BB that isn’t the way it works. There are zero hatcheries that operate where there is consistently zero benefit to the target audience (commercial, recreation, tribal).
As you know, the benefits are highly variable. In some years, the benefit is close to zero due to factors outside the purview of the hatchery, such as weather conditions or poor ocean survival. In other years, there are plenty of benefits when everything lines up perfectly. We can’t turn hatchery ‘on and off’ just because the ocean conditions are poor or on the chance that we might get a major flood just when the adults are returning (as we did for late-run coho in 2021).
Hatcheries need to operate thru ‘thick and thin’. And sometimes things are really thin, as they have been for the past 4-5 years. With the recent up-tick in ocean conditions, I expect those hatcheries that have produced few, if any, harvest benefits will suddenly become quite productive again.
We all wish that hatcheries would provide better benefits to all of us (i.e., more and bigger salmon), but we ought not suggest we eliminate them when they don’t.
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
11498 Members
16 Forums
63783 Topics
645430 Posts
Max Online: 3001 @ 01/28/20 02:48 PM
|
|
|