When I first heard about these programs, I was excited about a new way we could "help" our ailing native steelhead stocks. But as I have studied the issue in more detail, I am haunted by the reality of what is actually being accomplished.

The folks that run these programs should be accountable to answer a few questions.

Is the purpose of these programs to help rebuild wild fish populations? Or is it mainly to obtain high quality parental stock for the hatchery programs?

Since the progeny are clipped, doesn't that mean that basically we are mining the river for wild eggs to supply hatcheries that eventually create returning adults that are available for harvest? Aren't we really just diverting wild fish from their natural habitat and compromising their natural productivity? And for what? To prop up artificial propagation that produces fewer returning adults than would natural production? Worse yet, if they are clipped, aren't these returning adults susceptible to harvest?

While they might give us a "feel good" sense, are we really doing wild fish populations any favors with such programs?

A couple of the broodstock programs are nothing more than a way to fish closed waters for nates.

I have pounded on this exact point more than once, and came to the conclusion that most everyone on this board thinks they are a good idea.

You are right, they only produce a supposedly higher quality, river specific, harvestable stock. Key word being harvestable, as all are clipped because they are deemed "hatchery fish".

I likewise have tried to emphasize that planting the offspring in the fry stage would kill the hatchery classification argument. The answer I got was that the mortality rate was far higher when planted as fry.

While I never asked this part of the question, perhaps now is the time.....Is the high rate of mortality of fry plants a comparison of planted fry vs. planted smolts? or a comparison of planted fry vs. naturally spawned fry? My suspicions are that the comparison is made as hatchery fry vs. hatchery smolts. No surprise, right? I would have to believe that a naturally spawned vs. hatchery spawned comparison would reveal quite the opposite, i.e., that the hatchery fry hatch/survival is much greater than natural spawning.

My feeling is that if we are taking wild fish out of the system, and turning their hard fought for offspring into hatchery fish, is that in the wild fish's recovery best interest????

Isn't the Quinalt program a broodstock program?

What about Snyder Creek?

If you are using Wild x Wild for your start, what would be the problem?

How can these be bad??

If the nates are in serious trouble just stop all harvest on them. If they are making the established escapement goals why not collect brood stock to allow for a better quality fish for "harvest" catch & kill. The worlds not perfect, but I don't see why we accept those 4 - 7 lb skanky hatchery brats that we get now.

Just my .02 but here goes-

Lets say for a minute that with the same stock of fish that the hatcheries could get a better return off their investment (time, money,etc.) If this is the case then why not do it? I think for the oregon broodstock program they probably only collect a couple hundred (150?) fish for the program but get a few thousand fish in return. Don't quote me on those figures as I am not exactly sure of the exact numbers but you get the idea.

The broodstock fish are fish that are going to act more like wild fish and bite better, fight better and not to mention there is little or no harm with interbeading if the broodstock fish are no more than one or two generations from the wild stock. The problem with interbreeding now between hatchery fish and wild fish is that the DNA of these two types of fish are so different. If the DNA was the same the impacts of interbreeding would be reduced.

As it is, with the inbred hatchery stocks that are used now in washington, many have not seen any new genes added to the population. I know from my genetics classes and experience here at WSU that when you take a population of anything and reduce the numbers without introducing new genes back into the gene pool, that you eventually lead towards fixation of the gene pool. Hence the reason that many hatchery programs do great the first couple of years and then after a period of time gradually but steadily decline. This is probably why you see in most hatchery systems that the fish are "cookie cutters." When people say that they are clones, in many cases they are probably more correct than one would think. By continually adding new fish to the gene pool every year through collection of wild fish broodstock, the gene pool stays at a proper level of diversity.

Tim Lennox

I don't think you can really judge broodstock programs as generally good or bad. They need to be looked at individually, and judged based on what their goals are, and how well they are being achieved.

Supplementation programs are designed to help the wild runs by creating hatchery fish that are very similar to the wild fish, hoping that they will spawn in the wild with both the wild fish and their hatchery broodstock brothers and sisters. These fish are not created for harvest...they are created to help out ailing runs that do not have sufficient numbers to keep themselves going.

Enhancement programs are designed to create a higher quality hatchery fish for harvest, with the added byproduct of having hatchery fish that will not be as detrimental to the wild gene pool when they inevitably breed in the wild. I say "inevitably" because broodstock hatchery fish have very similar, if not identical, run timing as the wild fish.

Enhancement program hatchery broodstock fish are there for harvest.

I've spoken with folks who work on broodstock programs and they couldn't tell me what the point of their program was. Or worse, tell me that it's good for the wild fish, but then tell me that they are producing great fish to harvest.

For the supplemental programs, the idea is that due to environmental concerns the wild run cannot exist even at a replacement level. Look to Wenatchee and Entiat River programs as examples of runs like that. The hatchery fish are released and left to do their thing.

The enhancement programs have a wider range of issues. The biggest one for me is the incorrect belief that they are helping wild runs. They may, however, have much less impacts on wild runs than a traditional hatchery program would.

Here's the thing...broodstock programs are absolutely mining the wild runs for eggs and sperm. When the wild fish are removed from the river, and used to make hatchery fish, that is the definition of mining.

The question is not whether or not they are mining eggs, but whether or not it's a problem to do so. If we have a river that is not much over escapement, or at or below escapement, an enhancement program is damaging the wild fish. It's taking wild fish out of a run that can't afford to lose them to produce offspring that are intended to be harvested.

If a run is well above escapement, perhaps missing a few dozen wild fish is not a big deal for the run, so that's not a problem. However, this is where the having/achieving goals comes in; there is evidence to suggest that some of these programs do not return as many fish per two adults as the two adults would have done if they were just left in the river. This would serve the purpose of both reducing the wild run and the total run, in the name of having more fish to harvest.

I guess since it's not as dangerous to the wild run to miss those fish, it's more of a political decision to make; is it better to have a few less total fish, but more to harvest? Or is it better the other way around?

My final issue, which is becoming a big one on the Chehalis system, is that if there is a sizable component of late returning broodstock hatchery fish on a river with tribal fishing, then the tribes will net for their share of those hatchery fish. I think we can all agree that having nets in the rivers in March and April is a very bad thing for all the wild fish that would also be snapped up in the nets.

On rivers without tribal netting, this obviously wouldn't be a problem...and if it happened on rivers with large wild runs, they're going to be netting in March and April anyway (i.e. the Quillayute), it wouldn't make a difference.

It's rivers that are close to or below escapement where that would be a significant problem.

My ideal broodstock program would be...

1. On a river with no tribal netting, or one that already has late season netting;

2. With a wild run consistently over escapement;

3. Where the program produces a number of returning adults significantly higher than the fish would have produced if just left in the river;

4. Where there are collection facilities or areas to geographically separate the hatchery fish from the wild fish (i.e., Snider Creek, rather than tossing the fish right in the Sol Duc) to minimize natural crossbreeding;

5. And finally, within ten minutes of my house so I can fish there all winter.

I could probably bend a bit on #5, but the rest are pretty important.

Fish on...

Todd

Most fish raised in a concrete raceway are going to be inferior to a fish raised in the wild. Broodstock programs need to have defined goals and methods of determining if those goals have been reached. The hatchery offspring of wild broodstock will be a better fish than the offspring of 15th generation hatchery parents. The Vedder uses wild broodstock seemingly successfully.

Because of a brood stock program, somone caught a supposed hatchery 30lb fish a couple of weeks ago. Yeah right that is a clipped brood stock fish

Would the returning brood stock fish be spawned agian and agian like they do now or would they try to maintain genetic purity and just propogate true native steelhead???

It seems to me like if they propogated 2nd and 3rd generation broodstock fish that you would eventually create a "chamber creek" steelhead?

I believe what Todd said about taking broodstock fish ONLY if the run is above escapement goal...Anything else is considered mining for harvest

killing wild fish to supplement hatchery stocks is a bad idea.

To keep it very simple..and short, I believe that the broodstock program is in place to provide quality hatchery fish and if any of those fish should stray and mingle with real "wild stock" the gene pool would not be compromised. Which for us would only mean...

Louis

Todd

You laid it all out very nicely.

If a wild stock is depleted, there is ZERO reason to mine eggs to feed a hatchery which produces fish for harvest. That makes about as much sense as mass-capturing wild smolts and clipping them just so they can be caught and kept as adults upon their return home.

If a wild stock is doing well, then mining eggs from a few dozen fish to support hatchery production is probably inconsequential to the wild return. That way, managers could create some clip-fin harvest opportunity out of a healthy wild run.

But that begs the bazillion $$$ question. If productivity from naturally spawned fish is superior to hatchery-reared fish, why bother having a hatchery at all? Wouldn't you eventually get a bigger return from all-wild production. Then it would just be a matter of regulating harvest on the all-wild stock to maintain healthy escapements.

Things that make you go HMMM....

I asked the same question shortly after the skagit flood this year. I was just sick to think that the kings that were starting to show up in better numbers got wiped out during the flood. I thought it would be a great idea to take just a few wild fish and hatch then release the fry in one of the small streams/rivers that run into the skagit. it would be just a boost to the wild fish and the smaller streams are affected less by the floods. some of the streams have king returns and some dont from my observations. the kings are only my example but if the levels got up to the point of not needing hatcherys it would be great.....part of this observation comes from growing up in norther Michigan. in 1962 washington traded lake trout (called Mackinaw here) for kings, they did not open hatcherys for salmon they just released fry into every creek/stream/river that had water they now have great salmon runs and dont put one dime into salmon recovery. off course the indians dont net salmon in the great lakes they net whitefish and lake trout....when I posted it I had a mix of opinions for and against the broodstock program. I still cant quite grasp how a wild fish smolt hatched and released within the shortest possible time from in or near its parent river would be a hatchery fish....DJ

Todd ( and the rest of you who are gluttons for technical, long winded documents):

Here's a link I picked up from the "other" board regarding productivity from a wild broodstock coho program. Pretty shocking stuff!

chilcote study on coho wild broodstock program

The gist (yes, I even looked up the spelling on that one) of the document is that a wild broodstock hatchery program was being used to help recover depressed runs of lower Columbia coho. Turns out the smolt-to-adult survival of the program fish was only one-tenth of their wild counterparts. They found that mining those eggs and diverting them into a hatchery environment produced fewer returning adults than if the eggs had just been naturally seeded into the river gravel the way Mother Nature intended. When you factor in the additional cost of running the broodstock program, you really have to ask, "Is that worth it?"

Things that make you go HMMM.....

fishNphysician,
The Chilcote study is flawed with regard to the coho broodstock study... There were other factors that interferred with the success of it. (listed in the foot notes) Also the chilcote study seems to be the bible of the wildfish movement.. And there are fundamental probnlems with it as well.

Doc Fish

Couple of comments, first, the survival of hatchery smolts is generally lower then for wild smolts for all hatchery programs (although not as low as in the ODFW memo you posted). Where you make things up is in volume. The survival from egg to smolt can be as high as 90 percent in a hatchery, while in the wild, much much lower. So you get so many more smolts to stock that it usually more than makes up for a lower smolt to adult survival rate relative to wild fish.

Second comment is to be careful not to compare apples and oranges. All of the salmon/trout species (and probably individual stocks) react differently to hatchery conditions. You can't take the ODFW coho numbers and apply them across the board to steelhead or the other salmonid species.

I didn't think the Canadians were having that much of a difference in survival rates between their broodstock steelhead and wild fish. Seems to me they would certainly re-evaluate their programs if they were yielding numbers such as those found by ODFW. It hope that Oregon and BC are comparing notes.

All in all, the ODFW results and other work conducted by Chilcote indicate that hatchery brood stock programs may not work for rebuilding wild runs, but should only be considered for providing harvestable fish. Their role in the conservation of wild stocks may be limited to decreasing the harvest pressure on wild fish.

Interesting that the ODFW memo is dated two years ago. I wonder if they've made any progress answering some of the questions they raised regarding why the smolt to adult survival rates were so low?

Returning Broodstock fish on the river I fish are not bred from, But transported to tributaries on the system that are not meeting run escapement, the fish are not killed, Just striped of there eggs and milt and then released back into the system. How can it not be bad when on the Nooch the clipped fish spawn in the system more often then not, sometimes mixing with the wild fish and reducing the gene pool, It the brood stock world this gene is only one generation removed from the wild, Brood stock offspring can at times have a return rate of 6% higher then a true hatchery fish, As has been documented. So if we keep the gene pool pure , then incidential breeding will not be as harmful. If you are all that concerned about hurting the wild fish then quit fishing after Jan 30th. The majority of the hatchery run is over on a non broodstock system. And Yes mthe 30.46 lb clipped fish we caught was a broodstock offspring. Better to keep the blood pure in the system I think. Seems to be working on the rivers that it is used on, Both helping to increase the native run and proide a better resource that will not endanger the the future of the wild gene in the system. Just my thoughts. Matt