Chimming a little late on this one but definately an interesting thread.

Bank Walker Says "THis option is probably to spendy, but how about spreading the smolt plants throughout the whole system in tributary creeks and having adult trapps(weirs) to collect adults. That way it would spread fishing pressure and give the lower river a shot in the arm, say if you released fish in 1. Elwell creek, woods creek, and maybe some tribs above Reiter? Idaho does this and it seems to work pretty good, as long as you can capture fish so there no wild fish interactions"

I like your thinking however spreading hatchery fish throughout the system can be problematic. The way I understand the current science; it's best to isolate the adult hatchery fish from mixing/spawning with the the wilds. If you start trying to imprint hatchery parr/smolt to return as adults throughout the Skykomish system; i.e. Elwell Creek, Woods Creek etc. how would you propose to capture the returning hatchery adults? I think placing weirs across all these small tribes would greatly impact the passage of the wild fish. Also I imagine stations would be required for the parr/smolts, for 2 to 4 weeks???, prior to release in an effort to get the fish to "imprint" to that area. The imprinting stations would be required to keep the hatchery parr from competing with the wild parr. Imprinting stations would need preditor netting, daily feeding etc. kinda spendy for a program all ready under funded.

Dizzy

Keep on trying, I heard that 70 hatchery summer steelhead returned to the Wallace Hatchery just last week, so there are fish to be had. Keep that float/jig working!

Beezer

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Beez:

It's not all bad. I floated the SKy for the first time (ever) last Sat. with BroodBuster and a couple fellows from another board. One of the guys in the other boat popped this nice Chromer.



We saw quite a few fish in the water, including some nice steelhead. River is real low flow right now....made it a great time to learn the river. TONS of rafters, etc. from Ben Howard to Lewis St., though. Kinda sucked having to avoid them all...next time I'll take out at BH.

Anytime you get an open seat, give me a holler. I look forward to a "front seat" spot again!

Mike

OK Mike, you're on! Nice pic too.....nothin' like a Lavro full of gear rods Oh, yeah, nice fish too!

Beez

Sg,

I know where the town of Monte Cristo is . I know where mineral city is. There was a mine named Monte Cristo on the Sky. It had a board sign above it and went back into the hill maybe 50 Ft. or so. The sign disaaspeared in the 70's sometime and the mine shft was blown up. You can still see the remnants. The gravel has little geen specks of Marioposite in it on that section.

Beezer, I see what your saying about acclimation ponds to isolate wild from hatch. As far as the weirs go, I believe most are fish friendly, whereas the hatchery fish are moved to a tanker truck and the wild fish are allowed to keep moving. (this would also give good indication of wild component.

The state already releases smolts in most tribs without acclimation sites and collection facilities. Although there are a couple who have acclimation ponds come to think of it.

I just know there is a better answer to how our hatcheries are run now. I know 95% is ocean but, there's gotta be somin better than the Reiter fiasco.

I here the Sky got a push of fish after the last good rain. Wish i could get a few hours on my favorite drift

Bankwalker/Breezer-
An interesting idea but as Breezer points there are various logistic/economic obstacles to such and approach.

The first is that fish raised at say Reiter that are truck to another trib and release still tend to migrate back to Reiter.

Given that information the use of conditioning ponds (where fish were trucked to the ponds and held for 4 to 6 weeks prior to release so that they might imprint to the site) is the next logical approach. As with many ideas that actually has been tried. 25 years ago on the Snohmish system there were at least 9 active conditioning ponds (On the Raging, Tolt, Pilchuck, Barr, Woods, Wagley, Sultan, North Sky and South Fork Sky). It was found that they not as successful as hoped. Many of the returning adult still returned to their orginal rearing sites.

In addition as Breezer suggested predation was an issue. It would be pretty expensive to predator proof the ponds and in this day and age kill the various predators is not a PC approach.

There can be a significant ecosystem cost to the developement and use of the ponds. Obviously one would want to have the ponds in the anadromous areas. That means the ponds could impact developing eggs and fry of various species. In addition that type of habitat attracts young juvenile salmonids (especially coho) which would be vulnerable to predation by the steelhead smolts prior to release. Again not sure that trading potential hatchery benefits for known impacts on wild populations are advisable.

Trapping the release sites to remove the returning hatchery fish has its own set of problems. Those sites would have to be staffed during the migration periods. 1) to prevent vandalism and 2) to allow other wild anadromous fish (coho and sea-run cuthroat) that would be migrating upstream at the same time for spawning - the coho spawn in the Sky tribs through most of January and the cutts from January thur May.

Finally such an approach typically results in those fish returning to the release areas ending up in areas where most anglers can not fish - private property. This combined with the fish being spread out through the system results in few fish being harvested by the sport anglers. Do you think in this era of poor returns it makes good sense to adopt strategies that will limit the access to those few fish that do return.

Bankwalker -
It is clear that you have some strong feelings about the inadequacy of the hatchery program at Reiter. I'm interested in other ideas you may have to improve that program that would likely be successful and not put wild stocks at additional risk.

Tight lines
Curt

Smalma, Im not trying to be negative towards hatchery practices. All the reasons you shared make complete sense. Im just trying to think outside the box(probably not a good idea). Reiter is a major fishery in the sceme of things. Whereas Lewis St, Cracker Bar, to name some obvious ones where back in the day. My point is, its common to see 10+ fish taken from Reiter in early Dec, but very rarely will you see a fish taken at the drifts mentioned above. Thats why i got my tributary idea. (spread fish and pressure out)

If 20,00 smolts get planted in a trib, and the return rate was say 1%. 200 fish would return right. Of those 200, how many would actually return to the river of release, and how many would return to the original place of acclimation(reiter)????

If fish in the tribs were acounted for and trapped for broodstock for that river, than chances are the offspring would return to that river and not Reiter right???

Sorry for my rambling, hatchery fish science has always interested me for some strange reason.

Bank Walker -
Think outside of the box is never a bad idea - howelse do we learn and advance the state or our knowledge!

If the fish were collect in a trib they would have to be reared in that trib for the bulk of their early life (in the case of hatchery steelhead that is a little over 1 year - from the time the eggs hatch until the following May). To accomplsih what you want would require mimi-hatcheries on each of the tribs.

That would be quite a bit more expensive than the current system. Sources of reliable high quality water is always an issue with siting a hatchery. In addition additional $$s would be needed for capitol developement as well as O&M.

The characteristics that make what we call steelhead are controlled by both genetic and envirnomental factors. In your example if winter fish were trapped at say Woods Creek (hatchery or wild) their eggs collected and then reared say at Reiter. The offspring would return as winter steelhead (genetic) but they would return to Reiter (envirnomental).

Tight lines
Curt