Fry plants were the first thing tried with hatcheries. No real evidence that it worked very well.

I think that one of the biggest problems in hatcheries is when fish are incubated and/or reared in water other than their natural water. Apparently, many cold-blooded organisms have enzymes (which are inherited) that function best at different temperatures. A fish that evolved to incubate in really cold water will not do well incubating in warmer water, and vice-versa.

Fry plants would still be limited by rearing capacity of the stream. Fry would probably work well with pink and chum, pretty well with sockeye and fingerling chinook, fairly poorly with coho and yearling chinook, and even worse with steelhead.

We don't need "quick fixes". We have to let the fish that emerge from the gravel have a chance to survive.

The problem with fry plants, excepting chums and pinks, is that they don't actually return many, if any adult fish...they have an incredibly dismal return rate...like virtually zero in many cases.

Fish on...

Todd

P.S. Just in case some folks were wondering...we're not in Michigan...we're in Washington.

Mono crops rock.
























Until they don't.

Ickstream and fish culture-
I can see you are just trying to jerk my chain!
The Situk has more natural preditors per mile of river than any river in Washington!
All those 14,000 natives swim past our lodge, yet the Situk continues to put out the largest run of Native Steelhead probably in the world.

I have seen those Steelhead out of the great lakes and they are nice big fish.

Todd-You mention fry plants not working to well?
We used to run by sled 5 gallon buckets of fry to all the major bars in the Skykomish and walk them into the Sultan and for years had great returns, now I realize those returns were being caught by a much smaller population! We used to fish Summer Runs some days all alone on the Sky, but it sure seemed like those returning fish were big and in real good shape. Once the seeding was stopped by the state, it was a matter of about 5 years and it was over.

Same thing with our Coho pens on the Sky, those fish were moved to all the little creeks and they did great, but once the seeding was stopped it all went downhill.
I realize there are other factors involved, but it just does not seem that bashing hatchery fish and hatcheries into non-exisitance is the answer.

In addition to a century of demostrated failure there is lot of information now available indicating the harm/minimal benefit from planting of hatchery salmon fry. That said there are examples of success from fry plants though in most cases that occurred in areas of little or no salmon production (new introductions) and often in altered habitats. The often cited example of the Great Lakes is a classic example; however that does not mean that strategy would be universally successful.

Aunty -
"Wild fish are free"! Great comment which would be true if we lived in a perfect world. A large array of special interests and society as a whole are achieving economic benefits ($$) at the cost of the fish. To restore wild populations to something approaching reasonable productivity many folks are going to have give up a lot of economic value. Bottom line it costs a lot to keep wild fish and the sad reality is that most of us do not want to pay that cost. Though we all seem more than willing to shift that cost/blame to some one else.

How willing would you be to pay significantly more for your power, water, basic food stuff, etc?


GBL -
Just think how great the Situk would be if you were to establish a large scale hatchery program there. You could start by trapping most of the adults, stripping the eggs and out planting planting the fry. Should be able to easily double the numbers of returning adults and not have to worry about the whims of Mother Nature.(very much t.i.c.).

The so-call success of the outpalnting of hatchery coho fry on the Skykomish is largely a myth. When folks looked at the spawning information from the various streams in the Snohomish basin those recieving enhacnements (fry plants) were preforming no better than those not recieving plantings. Yes there was a dramatic increase in the over all basin coho escapements during the late 1990s and early 2000s, but those increaces were across the basin. This was in spite of decline marine overall coho survival - Harvest management changes benefited the escapements

Tight lines
Curt

+100 Aunty... 100 million in year in each state buys alot of cowpastures.

Of course there's alot of jobs involved, keeping the meat machine greased, that is...I can see it now, social workers claiming that since the loss of the hatchery's the depression and suicide rate is out of control.

After being intentionally decimated by commercials in the first half of the last century, the Situk steelhead run recovered to those great numbers without hatchery plants/fry boxes. Those are wild fish, currently spawning in excellent habitat, with high water quality and tight fishing regs.

Regarding the fry boxes on the Sky, isn't 5 years about the time usually seen between shifts from good to bad ocean conditions? Coincidence?

Believe what you want........

In the perfect world we'd have all wild fish returning....

But as I keep saying over and over and over... You take away hatchery fish and it will be a rude awakening of what we really have left for wild fish. I think a majority of you feel that all hatchery fish don't spawn and reproduce but you yank all hatchery fish and after 5 years I think we'll be shocked at what we have left for "wild" runs.....

But the day we head down that path I get the feeling we'll lose more and more fishing rights....

But my selfishness still wants those hatchery summer runs.. Pound for pound, they're some amazing fish!

Keith

actualy it has been done for chinook and the wild population fell on its face.

it has been done, it would help you greatly to do some research.

So the problem is? When you take returning hatchery stock and rebreed it over and over it becomes less hardy and reproductive...Damn wonder how many millions we spent in studies to figure this out when we could of just asked any animal breeder what happens when you breed brothers and sisters.

the offspring of hatchery fish spawning in the wild driving the wild population

We don't. We just wish they didn't.

Curt-
5 years was about how long it took to fall apart after the State stopped us from hauling fry all over the system. It worked and it worked well.

BUT-and it is a big Butt---
Back in the 70's when we were doing this, the fry were from hatchery stock, that stock came from the biggest fish each season and some fry came from brood stock. (Fish we went out and caught, put in tubes and matured) before taking the eggs/sperm and then put the brood back in the river.
The hatchery was clean and the pens were well maintained and only the best fish were used, the runts or brats as many call them were recycled back down stream to be caught.
Once the State put a stop to it, budgets were cut and the hatcheries went down hill and they took every egg no matter what the condition or size of the fish. There was a time when hatcheries worked well and put out quality fish.
I know that for the purist, it does not matter and only natives mean anything, but back then you could not tell the difference between hatchery and wild fish until February when the big ones came in and most of the hatchery fish were not an issue.
I shared a picture a few weeks ago of a 19lb. clipped Snoqualmie fish from 1976, I caught 4 that year that were in that class, with the largest right at 22lbs. The hatchery haters cannot deny those fish were big and strong and every bit as nice as a 22lb. native and without the clipped fin, you would never have known!
The State messed it up all based on politics and budget.

How is it that the statement keeps coming up something like, "until the State stopped us"?

I am getting a distinct feeling that the full time hatchery employees, and possibly the fish food suppliers and manufacturers (commercials?), and perhaps others who would be directly affected by the reduced demands (and consequently, working hours) of hatching and releasing fry as opposed to the labor/time intensive requirements of raising and releasing smolts.........just MAY have had something to do with this anti-fry stance??

Just an observation.

Where do you get your information Aunty? I'd like to see it. I remember when Gov Kitzcluber bonked about 25,000 hatchery coho on the Alsea. The Oregon coast coho are on the threatened species list. I haven't seen any recent numbers, the latest I've seen are numbers from 2007. ESA OR Coho
odfw numbers

I'll bet dog turds to donuts and hold the stakes in my mouth that an artificially hatched wild fry planting vs. an all natural wild fish spawn with the same starting number unfertilized eggs would produce more returning fish providing the hand distributed fry were started out in a receptive environment.

Think the State would go for such a test?

Why not?

And you just opened the door to inbreeding...

you will have to pull the entire population of fish off the beds and artificially hatched them all to get a diverse enough cross section of the population to limit the possibility of inbreeding...