i would be more willing to take the money we spend on salmon recovery now and come up with a plan that will work instead of rubbish like the HSRG recommendations.

GBL,

Please, what are you talking about? I'm calling BS on that working so well. You need to post better information if you want some credibility. Who was fry planting steelhead from wild broodstock in the 70s and where? Smalma and I have some experience with wild steelhead broodstock programs in the Sauk and Skagit Rivers.

Planting FED (as opposed to unfed) fry from wild steelhead broodstock can be an effective way to seed unutilized habitat. I've got the citations around here somewhere from studies in BC indicating a fry to smolt survival rate averaging 3%. Of the 3% that survive to smolt, during the "good" marine survival years of the 70s and 80s, you might get up to 10% adult return. 10% of 3% equals 3 hundredths of one percent of the total fry you planted. And that is only if you scatter planted those fry at a density of one fry per every two square meters of small stream space, since fry need slow velocity shallow water to rear in initially. If you hauled buckets of fry and dumped the entire contents of the bucket in one place, I assure you that you did it all wrong, and further reduced the potential fry to smolt survival rate. In order to achieve the low success (3%) I described above, you need to literally scatter a few fry, like a half dozen at a time, into each little pool (12 square meters, minimum). It typically takes about 1/4 mile of creek or side channel to properly plant a 5 gallon bucket of steelhead fry. And this is assuming that the water you stocked was not already occupied by wild steelhead fry from naturally spawning fish.

I'm skeptical of the results you describe because I'm not aware of any data supporting them, and because our experience on the Sauk and Skagit, rearing wild fish to smolt size and releasing them, on average produced no more returning adults than would have returned had the broodstock been left in the river to spawn naturally. With the inherently lower survival rate associated with fry plants, you should understand why I question any glowing results you allude to.

Further, please explain the source of the adipose clipped hatchery steelhead you caught in the Snoqualmie River in 1976. I am interested because WDG (now WDFW) didn't begin the wide scale ad clipping of hatchery steelheaad until the 1984 return year.

It's one thing to suggest or promote alternative fish culture or management techniques that may offer constructive promise. However, it does no one any favor to allude significant benefits from methods already tried where the resulting observations indicated few or no benefits. In other words, who are you trying to kid?

Sg

The only evidence of fry releases that worked (i.e., provided better returns than leaving the fish in the water) that I've seen was purely anecdotal, and when genetic testing was done, turned out to be completely wrong.

The workers dumped in a ton of fry during times of good marine conditions, and a ton of fish returned...they very wrongly assumed it was an excellent return of their fry plants, and harvested accordingly.

Turns out later that the fry returned no fish, and that the high returns were the progeny of the wild fish that weren't mined, but were left in the river to spawn. When the poorer marine conditions returned the "great returns" from the fry plants stopped, too...because they never actually existed.

Hatch boxes have proven repeatedly to be only minutely better...except, of course, for Gary's Cedar Creek coho...and, yes, I'm kidding.

Fish on...

Todd

Slab Happy,

Re: "until the state stopped us."

WDFW doesn't benefit by stopping programs that yield positive results. The state hatchery system (and the feds before them) planted millions and millions of salmon and steelhead fry. Most of those were unfed fry, and we have known for years that the results of those efforts were not statistically significantly different from ZERO. Stocking fed coho fry has shown a degree of production, however, as far as I know, no one has monitored the fry to smolt survival rate anywhere, as has been done with steelhead like I mentioned in my above post. WDFW can generate coho smolt production from fed fry plants in waters that were significantly under-seeded by natural spawners. The best example I know of for this is the Chehalis system, where deliberate over-fishing of coho has been a part of harvest management for decades, as described in the Chehalis thread by Rvrguy. The method can work, to a degree, but as far as I'm aware, we lack good data documenting the resulting production from the practice. And when the state does it, the coho fry plants are usually a small truck load dumped all in one spot, which we know from our steelhead experience is totally bass akwards because it's not how fry are distributed by natural spawning.

If fry plants were truly such a good deal, all those hatchery workers collecting their paychecks could stock 100 times as many fish if they didn't have to bother raising them for a year.

As for your dog turds to donuts bet, I'd love to take you up on it. What fish species are you referring to? I hope you like dog turds. If the state had the money for such a test, I can come up with a half dozen biologists by lunch time that would be all over that one, and not just to see you eat dog turds. As for why not, money is harder to get for research than for hatchery operations. It's always been that way and continues to be so.

Sg

I have to say that Bill McMillan's lifetime contribution to the understanding of our wild steelhead is a lesson in patience exercised on the order of a glacial expedience. The man has worked tirelessly toward truth in wild fish science and in fisheries management. No wonder the state won't listen to him.

I'm only home for a short time.....lunch.....and no, not dog turds.

Sg, rather extensive answer covering most all of the points that I would consider important...thanks. I was referring to steelhead, of course.....are there other fish? (kidding)

While I know it is impossible to construct and implement a test with the exact parameters that I outlined in my turd/donut bet, I find it very difficult to believe that fish can produce at a higher success rate than a controlled environment devoid of the dangers of natural spawn. It doesn't even make sense to me. Otherwise, why would anyone have created hatcheries in the first place? If wild fish could have kept up with harvest, then we wouldn't be where we are today, right? And back when hatcheries began, there were far more fish in the rivers already. Those fish had much better environment and less harvest pressure. The harvest quantities far exceeded those of today, I'm sure, but there was far more escapement as well.

You say that "WDFW doesn't benefit by stopping programs that yield positive results." And you follow with "deliberate over-fishing of coho has been a part of harvest management for decades".

I guess the question that then begs an answer is, "Why does the State NOT discontinue known destructive practices?"

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but will accept the roll if that is the only avenue open. I hope you understand that the "Less is More" argument now being made by the same entity responsible (or at least partially) for the present condition of our fisheries is just a tad hard to swallow. The "No, really, we have the answer now" argument from the State also is just a bit like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, is it not?

My disgust has nothing to do the work of the grunts....it's the politics, I guess.

Here's a simple question for you. Has the State Department of Fish and Wildlife ever knowingly lied? Secondly, has there ever been a directive...either written, orated, or implied by the same outfit, that requested or demanded that the truth NOT be revealed?

If I'm being asked to trust what is being presented, shouldn't truth be a prerequisite?

Nothing personal.

WDF&W lied? Whoa now if SG is and employee you should not ask him to answer that question. It is not correct or fair to do so. An employee is required to follow the directives of his superiors unless it is illegal or unethical just as I was in my job. If an employee his frankness on this BB should be admired, the guy has balls, because in the past the label of disruptive personality has been applied to those who are frank about issues if you rock the boat.

I set through a 45 min presentation by the director years ago outlining what was to become the Wild Stock policy and how this would save the day. In his mind it would do it, the senior staffer with him in a private conversation prior had already told me what the short comings were and why it would fail. Who lied? Nobody truth as to fish is often a matter of perspective driven by the restraints of politics, funding, and philosophical veiws.

It ain't black and white with fish. Hell I would take shades of gray.

I think it is very rare that anyone at WDFW would lie...but I will say that many a harvest or hatchery manager thinks that *their* program is the one that is different than all the rest...even though it's operated like all the rest, which have failed.

Look at all the closures of our terminal areas to the HARVEST OF HATCHERY FISH...!

Closing a river to hatchery fish retention, during the hatchery fish season? Why? Because the hatcheries are run so poorly that they can't even return enough fish to keep the hatchery going, so the only reason that those fish exist...which is harvest opportunity...gets curtailed.

Those hatchery programs are run for one reason...to keep the hatchery program going.

What an incredible waste of money and energy.

Fish on...

Todd

We agree on lots of things...just disagree on some of the tools to use to attain our common goals.

Fish on...

Todd

There was a time when those hatcheries ran just fine.
Like I said, the fry we were seeding with were big healthy fish and returned as big healthy adults.
Budget cuts came and the STATE stopped all efforts other than to dump fry down the outlet all in one shot. They stopped cleaning the holding ponds like they used to and cut the feeding, and we wonder why the hatchery program are in the dump.
Everyone knew it was wrong.

Slab,

It may not be impossible to do that test. I was thinking it may have already been done, sort of, but it would require accepting a few assumptions. With dog turds on the table, I thought you'd hesitate.

As I understand your experiment, we begin with 4,000 hatchery steelhead eggs and 4,000 wild steelhead eggs. Yes, you'll end up with around 3,760 hatchery fry and 400 to 1,200 wild fry because of the protective hatchery environment. But the race quickly shifts. Because the hatchery fry hatched in hatchery Heath trays, they are already slightly less healthier than their wild counterparts. The poor little bastards, due to having hatchery parents have no idea what natural food looks like, and because you didn't know about the BC study I mentioned in my post to GBL, you didn't scatter plant them correctly. You hauled them in a couple bucket loads and dumped each of them in two large holes in a creek or river side channel.

The wild fry will upon emergence from the gravel immediately seek out suitable fry habitat that is shallow and slow and begin feeding. Your hatchery fry are in the wrong place, but because they are hatchery fry, they don't know it, but they will seek slower current because they cannot maintain themselves in the faster current. However, the water is deeper than they should be in (deeper so that you could dump your bucket with splashing them on the rocks). What happens next isn't pretty. Your hatchery fry (which are the traditional unfed, rather than fed fry) are going to get hungry and may starve to death (fry need to eat within a week) before they figure out what natural food is and where to find it. Fortunately most of them will be put out of their misery by predators before they starve. Because you dumped almost 2,000 fry in one spot, they will attract predators: dippers, kingfishers, herons, mergansers, raccoons, weasels, and maybe otters; no, they're too small for otters.

This is not to say that the wild fry won't be preyed upon. They will. But not before they even begin feeding. Since they feed immediately, they will avoid predation better. Within one month of your bucket stocking of hatchery fry, the wild fry will outnumber your hatchery fry.

Although brief, that's a pretty fair description of what happens. Now you have to eat dog turds.

Shifting gears now, and sticking with steelhead, you allege that if wild fish had kept up with harvest, we wouldn't be where we are today. False. Wild steelhead didn't keep up with harvests, especially in PS rivers. However, steelhead are very resilient as are all salmonids. WDG increased steelhead conservation measures beginning in 1976 and 1977, resulting in increasing wild spawning escapements. Wild steelhead populations began increasing, and provided the pretty darn good fishing we now long for in the 1980s. Incredibly, the 1980s are now the "good old days." Wild steelhead harvests have been limited in every PS river system that I am aware of since that time. That's not to say there has been no commercial or sports harvest. There has been. But the number of wild steelhead harvested did not jeopardize spawning escapements. During the years that there was any significant wild steelhead harvest, there also were good spawning escapements. Consequently, it doesn't hold up to say that the runs were over-harvested in recent times, and the over-harvests of the 1960 and 1970s were made irrelevant by the recoveries during the 1980s.

The upshot is that I cannot say that harvest has any bearing on the current status of PS steelhead. Because steelhead rebounded so well in the 1980s, it seems like hatchery steelhead are also not responsible for the current status of wild steelhead, but it may not be that simple. There may be hatchery:wild interactions that have reduced the reproductive fitness of wild steelhead, but even if that is true, it doesn't appear to be the proximate cause of the current status of wild steelhead.

As an aside, WDFW, Skagit tribes, and Seattle City Light have begun a comprehensive genetic survey of O. mykiss throughout the Skagit watershed. In about three years we should have a darn good idea of the degree of hatchery introgression in the wild population. Previous genetic testing showed very little, but the sample sizes were small and the testing was not comprehensive. Now that the wild population is tanking, we're going to do the study that should have been done 30 years ago. (However we didn't have DNA testing then.)

Shifting again, you asked about stopping destructive practices in regards to deliberate over-fishing of wild stocks. The case in point is coho, but applies to chinook as well. The reason is that there were benefits associated with fully harvesting co-mingled hatchery populations. Managers knew for decades that hatchery runs could support harvest rates in excess of 90% and that wild fish could support harvests ranging up to 75%. (In the early 20th century, when habiat conditions were better, some wild populations could actually sustain harvest rates of 80 and 90%, like their hatchery counterparts, but that obviously didn't last. With vested interests like commercial fishing and a growing recreational fishery, mangers thought it acceptable, if not actually prudent, to sacrifice wild stocks in river systems that had really productive hatchery populations in order to satisfy commercial and recreational fishing. So they did.

Regarding knowingly lied, in my opinion, yes. There are differences of opinion, and executives may actually believe what they say. However, my opinion is that they knew, or should have known, that certain things said were not true. Case in point. I've heard the Director and managers say they want or intend to restore naturally self-sustaining populations of wild chinook in Puget Sound that provide a harvestable surplus. While this could be true for the Skagit, and maybe the Skykomish, it's flat out dillusional for the rest of the PS tributaries if one examines human population and growth trends, natural resource use per capita, and the present trend between chinook habitat protection, restoration, and continued degradation. It is well shy of rocket science to conclude that the recovery goal of harvestable wild chinook is dillusional or dishonest, take your pick. Yeah, heresy, I know.

Yes, truth should be a prerequisite barring some odd security reason, but truth can turn people off and evaporate hope. And hope is critical to the human condition and to have any chance of recovery success at all. Not to mention justifying the millions of dollars spent on chinook recovery projects in river basins that will never produce a harvestable wild chinook. But this is a major shift in topic, so I'll drop it now.

Nothing personal? I'm OK with personal. And no offense taken. I work for you.

Sg

salmo, simply a outstanding post. that was a great read. possibly the very best i've ever read. thank you.

Salmo-
Since this is the first post that really makes sense, I'll ask you.
We did all that seeding both Snohomish system and Skagit system back in the 70's, mostly Summer Runs, but every return after the seeding was done, and the seeding was widespread and both gavel bars and pools, we had great returns of fish. I will admit. there were not many of us fishing on them but it seemed there were so many returning, it was no problem having a 10 to 20 fish day sometimes and almost never got skunked.
As soon as the State shut it down, the very next run that would have returned from seeding but did not get seeded, fell off so severly, you knew right away something was wrong. Now it might have been a combination of many things, no one ever really checked.
Remeber all those big Steelehad that used to return to the Sultan river?
Those were ALL seeded fish from the Sultan Sportsmans club, they were shut down about the same time, it only took about 5 years and the fishing was nothing compared to before.
Thanks for your insight.

GBL,

I still can't make sense of what you claim to have done. Who was the biologist your work was coordinated with? What size summer steelhead were you planting? Fry at 2,000 fish per pound, parr at 400 fish per pound or smolts at 10 or fewer fish per pound? Other than the Sultan, where in the Snohomish and Skagit systems did you plant fry?

How do you know the "great returns of fish" were the result of your fry plants? How many years after fry planting did the adult fish return? Were hatchery smolt plants being made in the same waters that you were stocking fry in? I ask that because, if so, the returns were more likely from smolt plants than fry plants. Good returns of adult steelhead from fry planting is such a rarity that it would be irresponsible of me to buy your story without some persuasive evidence, which isn't the kind of info you're providing.

I know of summer steelhead fry plants, actually Vibert egg box plants, made in the Nooksack in the 70s, and it "appeared" that a few adults returned from those plants, but there was no conclusive evidence that the egg box project produced even a single returning adult, although there may have been a few. Smalma was probably directly involved in that and could provide more info.

I don't doubt that you had some good fishing, but that doesn't mean it resulted from your fry plants. You need to bring more info to this topic to make your story believable. Sorry, but that is the record of steelhead fry planting.

Sg

Sg, good post.

You're wrong about a few things, but you had no way of knowing that. You supposed that I would start the fry in a bad environment when I said specifically that one of the requirements for success would be planting the new hatchlings in a receptive environment. Also in order for you to acheive the "dog turd eating" goal, 100% of the wild parents would have to select ideal spawning environment, hopefully free of natural dangers. I had in mind the upper reaches of places like May Creek, tributary of the Wallace to scatter my fish. While I have no idea what kind of condition it is in today, I remember it from long ago. You too, I'm sure, know of many ideal locations of cold clean water with plenty of natural food sources, shade, cover, and modest flow. (You didn't REALLY think I'd toss a bucket full of fry in an open pit full of Bull trout or in the midst of a set of rapids, did you?) Watch out for those damn King Fisher's though. They don't care whether or their meal is natually spawned or carried upriver by man.

While your contention that the wild naturally hatched fry would be stronger than the hatchery fry, you are talking a miniscule difference, if one exists at all. They wild babies may even be weakened temporarily from the exertion of fighting their way through the gravel. And the wild fry are no smarter about feeding than fry hatched elsewhere. It's a learned behavior, not taught, and both our samples have the same quality parental line.

If I made all the mistakes you outlined for me, you would be right....I'd be eating the turds.

As far as the "truth" questions I asked, you did exactly what I figured you would....answered. I figured there was a good reason why you are quoted in my sig line.

Respect is not about the paperwork. You have mine.

Salmo-
I will have to talk to some of the old timers that were involved. I was just a young sledder used for transportation and enjoyed the great fishing.
That is why I was asking you!
I do know they were in the range of 400 per pound as they had been riased past the normal hatchery plant sizes.
There was also a couple of ponds used for Coho and those fish were all moved to local creeks as that is where Coho do the best, right?

The Skagit were all Chambers Creek fish and the brood stock fishery was hook and line and was real fun if you were choosen to be one of the few that got to fish out of season for huge Steelhead!

Slab,

Certainly no disrespect meant from this end either, but you've made a couple errors I didn't previously know about. May Creek is already inhabited by wild fish. So when you super-impose your hatchery fry on the wild fry that already live there, both will suffer. But the hatchery guys will suffer more in spite of their superior numbers, altho perhaps not immediately. They won't know where they are and will have to seek suitable fry colonization habitat. That habitat is already occupied by the wild fry that already emerged from the gravel. So both will have to compete for space. Having the advantage of having hatched from gravel, the wild fry will have an advantage over fry that are slightly less fit from hatching in a heath tray (it's an energetics and lipid reserves thing). I'm setting the rule that your hatchery fry are unfed; not giving the little bastards the longer term advantage of being fed fry, which is likely to produce the result of fewer eventual adult steelhead than if the hatchery fry had never been planted in the first place.

That difference in fitness between the hatchery and wild fry at the time of ermegence is small, but I think this is one time where small is significant. A newly emerged fry has about a week at most to colonize suitable fry habitat and begin feeding, or it dies. Starving fish usually end up as prey before actually dying of starvation however. That hatchery fry shares the instinct to feed, but they are not as good at it as the wild fry. I've raised several salmonid species in a hatchery setting; coho are best at going on the feed, steelhead and chum second, chinook third, and Atlantic salmon are the real dumb shits when it comes to feeding - it's a wonder they ever survive at all. Anyway, that hatchery steelhead fry does not go on the feed as readily as his wild counterpart. That's my contention, and I'm stickin' with it.

I've never heard of any indication of weakening because wild fry have to wiggle through the gravel to emerge. Even if they have to move laterally 10 or 20 feet as well as upward maybe a foot. It would only weaken them if they were delayed significantly in beginning feeding. And there is feed in the gravel in the form of very small invertebrates.

So, do you like your dog turds with gravy?

Sg

The answer to the question about fry planting steelhead is out there. The Game Department, at Snow Creek, did a multi-year study where they looked at standing stock of fish in 3 creeks in spring, summer, and fall. After getting the background data the streams were fry-planted. Sampling continued, including smolt trapping. The streams were also spawner-surveyed, so there is a measure of what the natural escapement was.

Never have seen a write-up but the data was collected.

Very worthwhile discussion. I've always thought that streams with good habitat that had very few steelhead in them could be jump started with good practices. For instance, using a broodstock program to collect wild adults, spawning them in the hatchery, then outplanting them as fry. One of the major mortality factors in wild fish survival is the egg to fry life stage. This method would increase survival dramatically in the first stage of life, but would not dumb down the juveniles being held in the hatchery to become smolts. I know for certain it has worked in the past.

GBL -
I'm having a very difficult time following what you are saying. Your "historical" references seem to be mixing up coho and steelhead and Skagit and Skykomish and clearly you have some mis-information.

As Salmo g said I have at least some limited experience and knowledge concerning Skgit and Skykomish wild steelhead (and other anadromous salmonid) and have handled fish or two over the years. Some specific comments.

Yes 1976 was an exceptional year for big steelhead. In that season I personally saw 5 documented Chambers Creek steelhead over 20 #s. However none of those fish were fin clipped and only could be identified by stub dorsal fins or scale patterns. The only large scale fin clipping of winter steelhead that I recall in the North Puget Sound rivers at that time were in the Nooksack; mass marking of hatchery steelhead in our rivers as pointed out by Salmo didn't happen for nearly another decade. Though to be fair in that era there were a few test groups of hatchery fish in various that were fin-clipped but most were not. It should be noted that other than that exceptional year 20# Chambers steelhead were very rare indeed. When I count up all the 20# Chamber's Creel hatchery steelhead that I have seen between 1962 and 1975 plus all the years between 1977 and today the total is less than what I saw in just 1976. The fact that there were large hatchery fish in 1976 certianly doesn't they always were big; in fact quite the opposite.

Regarding the exceptional summer run fishing on the Sky in the period from the mid-1970s to early 1980s. Remember Reiter came on line in 1974 and for the first time large numbers of summer-run smolts were released in the system. The first few years there were lots of fish and compared to recent years few fishermen. The result as any of us that fish in that era can attest some pretty darn good fishing. Those summer steelhead were often of very nice size. That large size was largely due to an older salt water age ( 3-salts). This was the result of selective breeding at the hatcheries (mostly Skamania). When ever possilbe the old time hatchery manager used the largest and what he consider best looking fish as his brood stock. During the mid-1980s the spawning protoclols were modified to eliminate that selection (concern over potential genetic bottlenecks). It became the standard to use brood fish that were representative of the population that returned. Very quickly the average age of the returning adults became young - fewer 3-salts and more 1-salts; until now the age structure is mostly 1 and 2 salts (the original ages of the wild fish from which the brood stock was taken before hatchery selection). Interestily the very same thing happened to the age structure of the naturalized wild summer steelhead above Sunset falls (BTW an example of where fry plants help jump start a naturalized population).

The early wild steelhead brood stock program in the Skagit basin was during the very early 1980s. That effort (and the ones that followed a few years later) targeted the wild Skagit fish not the hatchery steelhead (Chamber's). That was why the fishery was late in the season and in generally closed waters. In fact the biologist on that first effort went so far as to tag each brood fish, took and read scale samples from each fish to insure that they were indeed wild prior to using them as brood fish. In addition to the two wild brood stock efforts there was an additional effort that focused on the planting of steelhead fry during the 1980s but again that was from eggs taken from wild fish with similar efforts to insure that Chamber's Creek fish were excluded from the brood stock. It should be noted that based on spawning ground information the areas that recieved those fry plants did not end up with more spawners than areas not supplemented.

BTW- speaking of summer steelhead the summer of 1983 was probably the mother of all years for very large hatchery summer steelhead. The wild winters that same spring also had many exceptional size fish

Finally the overwhelming evidence is that out planting of coho or steelhead fry is of limited value. If fact the use of fry plants has often been used to "make up" for over fishing; in effect enabling such destructive management practices. Fortuantely for the Skykomish wild coho of the 1970s that period was one of exceptional coho marine survival (up to 5 times better smolt to adult survival than we have seen recently). Such great survival can make up for a number of resource abuses.

OMG - After that trip down memory lane I'm really starting to sound like an "ole fart" longing for the "good ole days".

Tight lines
Curt