More hatchery plants would mean more hatchery fish on the spawning grounds reducing the amount of wild fish spawning sucessfully meaning less wild fish coming back.

Here is my issue with CR spring Chinook fishery, admittedly a fishery I know very little about and have never participated in.....this is a fishery where they have the ability to know exactly how many fish are going over Bonneville. Instead of "forecasting" the run size, letting people pound them below Bonneville for X number of days, then saying Uh Oh, there's not enough fish we better shut it down, why not wait until enough fish have passed over the dam and THEN open it up....above the dam, below the dam, or both?

I've always felt the only fishery this state runs correctly (besides put and take lowland lake trout) is the Lake WA sockeye fishery. If enough fish don't enter the lake, the fishery is not opened. How hard is that? Due to the fact that they can count all the fish, don't they have that same ability on the Columbia?

Ike

As you can see and already know, fish management is as much or more about what people want than it is about what fish need.

Ikiss,

Yes, the ability to manage the Columbia spring chinook run that way is hypothetically possible, but it would ignore the desires of the LCR non-treaty commercial fleet and the LCR recreational fleet. No openings until an in season update based on fish over Bonneville would be very good for the wild fish. As you can see and already know, fish management is as much or more about what people want than it is about what fish need.

Sg

JG
I still think the way to ensure that NO hatchery fish get onto the spawning beds would be to erect a barrier dam like is on the Cowlitz on any river that has a native run. This with a fish sorting facility would all but insure no passage of non wild fish. I think we all pretty much agree the numbers of "wild" fish on most rivers are probably miss/non clipped hatchery origin fish.
I was told once that the tribes were against clipping all hatchery fish. Does anyone know if this is the case?

Just curious, but if the hatchery got back mostly non biting fish because those were the majority of fish that made it back, would those genes affect the fishing for the fish returning from those stocks?

everything's getting clipped on the LCR this year ....springers ..falls and coho....anybody not clip 30% of their springers from here on out is gonna be unemployed real quick....

Keith,

You may have a point, but I'll take my chances with terminating the LCR gillnet fishery. Just because it's gone doesn't add up to reason for terminating a recreational fishery in the same area. Each should be analyzed on its respective merits and decisions made accordingly to the best balance of biological and social interests.


Sg