As far as I know, none of these fish are marked with a fin clip.

My question is this:

What portion of the return is naturally produced (progeny of natural-spawning fish) versus hatchery produced? Do they know? Do they even care?

Is there a MSY escapement goal for naturally spawning fish? Is that where the 350,000 number comes from? How many fish does WDFW typically take for hatchery broodstock requirements?

Salmo g? S malma? Anyone?

If I remember correctly they take 6,000 of each sex from a crossection of the run for broodstock and release about 17,000,000 unfed fry into the Cedar River annually.

The hatchery return is somewhere around 25% of the total return on the better years.

The hatchery fish are heat marked on their ear bone enabling the bio's to determine the composition of the run but not until after a crossection of fish killed for examination.

You can find the hatchery management plan on the WDFW website.

Plunker as always has done his research and has it pretty much nailed.

The contribution of the hatchery fish to the adult return will vary quite a bit depending in large part on how the wild spawners do. - For example escapements who experience large floods will contribute less than those without flooding.

Tight lines
S malma

The Lake Washington Sockeye run is an artificial run to the lake system. No "wild" native stock exist.

The sockeye are not native but most of them are wild. These fish have actually spread through the Lake Washingon system and even go into Lake Samamish. About 95% of them, however, head up the Cedar.

On the Cedar there is a temperary hatchery. It actually is used for sorting out fish for the fish ladder at the dam. Chinook, coho, and steelhead are allowed to continue above the dam to spawn while sockeye are released down river due to the fact that there are too many of them. They would post a threat to the drinking water quality. The current production of the hatchery is 17 million fry per year (less than 25% of the overall population).

They want to upgrade the hatchery to a permenant hatchery that is capable of an output of 34 million fry per year along with the wild fish output. That would mean a sockeye season every year and billions of $$$ for the local economy. The only reason that the new hatchery has not been made is that there a a few groups that apose it, such as Washington Trout.

Blame Ron Sims first. We would have been having a sockeye season each year for quite awhile if it were not for Ron Sims. He pulled the plug on the spawning channel after everyone else had agreed to it and the money was allocated. Spawning channels are what the Canadians use to produce huge numbers of sockeye. I vote against him whenever possible for what he did in screwing us out a sockeye fishery.

Deepwater

I really take exception to WDFW's 350,000 fish escapement rule. They selected this number 30 years ago and since that time have not modified it or adjusted it in any way. Is that lousy science or what??? Or did they just get it perfect right out of the gate???

My own analysis shows the computed parent/offspring correlation coefficient to be .25 out of a possible 1.0. This is a very weak correlation that in turn refutes the idea that 350,000 fish are needed to sustain this fishery.

Also, why are they so anal about a totally intoduced fishery?? I think WDFW likes the annual drama every summer.