Snohomish & Puget Sound Coho Fishing Enhancement

Eagle Creek Hatchery is located on private property and operated solely by volunteers with limited funding.

Over 60,000 eyed-eggs, surplus from Wallace Hatchery, are hatched, raised, and released into the Skykomish River annually. This year we are home to over 88,000 fish!

Why is a private hatchery important? The surplus fish from the WDFW hatchery, if not kept local, would be given to other organizations and released in distant river systems. We need to keep these fish local!


Whether you fish the Sound or the rivers, from a boat or from shore, with friends or alone, get paid to fish or pay to fish, buy fishing gear or sell it, this directly benefits YOU!

Eagle Creek Hatchery is as ongoing project that brings community together!
In mid-2009 Everett Steelhead and Salmon club took over the operations of the hatchery. The entire water system had been severely damaged in the 2007 floods and required total replacement. The hatchery is operational now, but in need of .... https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/snohomish-puget-sound-coho-fishing-enhancement

Good project and for those that value and use it, should definitely hop in and help if you can or make a donation. They have a Facebook page you can keep in touch by.

Hey Phoenix77, thank you for sharing this here! And thank you too Nick for commenting! What a super cool surprise to find this post!

Fishtales, Keep Us informed on the progress at Eagle Creek Hatchery...thx

Thank RognSue! I will keep everyone posted! The fish are great, and we have lots of them. Thank you for your support! Thanks again for the great donation.

New perks will be available for donations!

I realize the following will not be popular!

The Snohomish system has consistently support the most robust wild run of coho in the State and maybe in the lower 48 states. Based on the forecasts for 2014 20% of the wild coho (150,000) originating in the State were expected to be produced by the Snohomish

The system consistently produces 1 to 1.5 million wild smolts one has to wonder why any hatchery fish are needed in the system. Yes I realize that the hatchery program at the Wallace supports much of the Tulalip coho program and that program is not going away any time soon why further spread hatchery fish in the basin?

Another view.

Curt

Curt, correct me if I am wrong ;), but I believe the Snohomish River coho hatchery production is a supplemental program (for harvest) and is operated as a integrated (native broodstock) program. Per many previous discussions, a segregated program would best be utilized with a healthy wild stock as a base rather than "mine" wild river of origin adults from a system with depressed stocks. So seeing how the Snohomish coho are considered a healthy stock....why not.

The wild Snohomish river coho would probably be better off if there were no coho hatchery production however they can obviously tolerate the additional impacts (harvest) of the hatchery fish. Therefore, the hatchery fish provide additional harvest especially for the recreational fishers. Then there is the additional recreational advantage in mixed stock fisheries that allow only marked fish retention.

As far as the Eagle Creek coho program, some refer to it as a "feel good" program for the recs.....and I guess it is. It's also a bunch of hard working people from a variety of clubs, currently headed by the Everett Steelhead and Salmon club, raising 50,000 to currently 80,000 FIN-CLIPPED (by the clubs) coho to enhance coho recreational fishing, whether it be mixed-stock fisheries off the coast or in the straits, or local coho fisheries. I feel good about it.

Steelspanker:

No adult trap at Eagle Creek. There are however some pretty good engineered pool n' drops to help any returning adult "wild" or hatchery coho to do whatever they want to do.....

We support programs that give us a chance to do what we love...

Breezer -

Believe me; I both understand and appreciate that those working for the "Eagle Creek Hatchery" are both hard working and have a concern for the resource and the fishing that resource supports.

And I yes I do see that the Wallace hatchery program is at least a partially segregated program and in the short term the fish produced there and released at either the Wallace, Tulalip or Eagle Creek provide fishing benefits to the fishers. My concern is the impacts that those segregated hatchery coho may have on the wild population that is the back bone of the Snohomish coho fishery. I believe it still is the case that approximately 90% of the coho caught in the Snohomish system are from natural production. I would think it would be obvious that the long term viability of the Snohomish coho fishery is dependent on maintaining a productive as possible wild population in the basin.

Releasing a poorly segregated hatchery product to spawn in the wild with the naturally produced fish is counterproductive to that wild population.

RognSue-
I understand your desire to continue to fish and to preserve that opportunity. See the above comments. In any fishery where 90% of the run is wild the future of that fishery is dependent on that wild population.

curt

oops, I meant to say that I thought the coho hatchery program in the Snohomish system is a integrated program not segregated.

Beezer -
I wondered if that was what you meant. I do recall that a dozen years or so ago that there was serious talked in integrating the Wallace coho by including wild broodstock. A well integrated hatchery program uses incorporates some wild brood (the percentage needs varies depending on the number of hatchery fish spawning in the wild) so that the resulting brood stock is "representative" of the wild population.

The Snohomish wild coho typically spawn from late October/early November through mid-winter (early February - though some years there still are active spawning wild coho in March). The peak spawning for those wild coho is usually late November/early December.

A review of WDFW's hatchery escapement report for 2013 showed that all the coho eggs at the Wallace hatchery (including presumably those for Eagle Creek) take for the year were done so by the 20th of November (with roughly 75% of the eggs taken in the week prior to the 20th). In other words the eggs were from only the front half of the wild spawn timing (much as they were 15 years ago). While some wild coho were included in the brood stock (167 wild fish out of 3,432 fish spawned) the failure to more broadly represent the characteristics of the wild population would indicate that the hatchery brood stock is a poorly integrated hatchery stock which has not substantially improved over the last decade.

In regards to the long term productivity of the wild population the concerns remain the same for either a poorly segregated or poorly integrated brood stock. The uncaught hatchery fish returning to the area near the Eagle Creek facility that spawn in the wild are contributing to the number of mal-adapted hatchery fish spawning in the wild and increasing that program only increases the impacts from that program.

The question I have for you and others is how important is having a productive wild population to the long term stability and health of the fishery that folks so enjoy?

Curt

Curt,

Didn't know that the integrated program at Wallace was so poorly run....thought that the HSRG signed off on that.

I do enjoy having a healthy wild coho population in the Snohomish system. I guess someone (other than the WFC) needs to prove to me that the current hatchery program is even a remote threat to the stability of the wild coho stock. Big picture wise I see the overall costs/benefits to hatchery coho in the Snohomish to be a plus for recreation and not an issue/threat to the wild stock.

Smalma,
so from what I'm reading you are saying we should either take more wild fish into the hatchery from the later run or stop it altogether, correct?

is either thing just as good as the other? or do you think we should just put our money elsewhere?

Curt raises an interesting point about the Snoho. The wild coho there are doing well enough to support fisheries. While there may be questions about how the productivity could be naturally enhanced the fact remains that the run is not only self-sustaining but does support harvest.

Yet, this is "not enough". We (the Royal We) want more than nature can produce. As population grows and demand for fish increases it seems inevitable that We are willing to trade natural production for hatchery enhancement.

cncfish -
From my understanding of the HSRG recommendations there probably are enough wild coho included in the brood (generally the recommendation is for approximately the same portion of wild fish in the hatchery brood stock as hatchery fish spawning in the wild). For a well integrated brood stock one wants the hatchery fish similar to the wild population. As we saw at least in terms of spawn timing that is not the case for the Wallace brood stock.

Not sure that in itself is a large issue for the Wallace program. The ability to collect the returning adults at the rack helps to limit the potential hatchery/wild impacts. However why the program is expanded to areas like Eagle Creek where more of the uncaught returning hatchery may spawn in the wild the concerns can develop. The larger or more wide spread those types of programs the higher the concern.

Remember the Snohomish consistently sees wild coho escapements in the 100,000 fish range ( modern day record was in 2001 when more than 1/4 wild coho spawned in the basin). Such a robust wild run can support harvest levels in the 30,000 to 60,000 range (substantially more if periods of above average marine survivals.

Curt

Myassisdragon, it is the debate that shapes the fisheries now, so the better informed we are the better decisions we can ask for.

Smalma -
as I see it this from your comments you are saying we don't need the hatchery for a season on this river. I can agree with that. I have said before the best hatchery we have in the system is the trap and lift over sunset falls. it produces far more fish then the Wallace at a lower cost.

That said producing hatchery marked fish for mark selective fisheries in the salt needs to be factored in. without the Wallace and Eagle Creek you would take fish away from those fisheries. you could maybe replace them by putting out more fish from a river that's wild population is doing worse but then you put that population at more of a risk of being overwhelmed by strays.

so the question remains should we shut them down and put that money elsewhere or leave them in place?

oh and the rack comes out of the Wallace fairly early in the spawning season. maybe that practice needs to change also?

cncfish -

It is my understanding that the Wallace coho hatchery program contributes substantially the availability of marked coho in the various marine mark selective fisheries.

The exact details of the program would be available via the HGMP available on WDFW's web site. It is a complex and surprising efficient program. The program goal is for an escapement in the 4,500 to 5,000 adult range with a green egg take goal of 4.5 million eggs. Of those eggs 200,000 are for the Wallace program proper, 2.1 million going to the Tulalip hatchery, 2 million for the south Sound and Squaxin net pen programs with the remainder going to programs like Eagle Creek.

The tribes are mass marking all their coho production though there is portion of that production that is not adipose clipped. I'm not sure what portion is actually fin clipped but am sure that is the majority. If it is important that portion can be determined. If I recall correctly roughly 15% of the hatchery coho returning to Puget Sound come from eggs taken at the Wallace hatchery. Though it is the case that only 1 or 2% of that production is head to the Wallace.

To recap the over all coho program on the Snohomish system provides some overall balance with what often is the State's largest wild runs (over the last decade the average wild escapement has been around 120,000) while contributing significant numbers of the fish to region's hatchery run.

While we all have different priorities when it comes to the value of wild and hatchery salmonids and each of use would probable tweak the Snohomish coho management one way or the other in the terms of hatchery and wild production I think it would be fair for many the current management is in the ballpark for that balancing act.

Curt

So for me the answer to your original post on this subject "why further spread hatchery fish in the basin" comes from some of the eagle creek history on there web page. "to reintroduce salmon into Eagle Creek. The creek outlet was blocked by a county dike and beaver dams. The groups constructed a single rearing pond on the Creek supplied by two incubators which could accept around 135K eggs."

at the time Wallace stock was the closest to native that was available (mostly integrated hatchery/wild stock) so the choice was made.

Now it is a PR win for the wdfw as well as an education opportunity for adults, with a low risk of messing up the wild population. not a perfect answer... but a good balance. is it a scared cow, no. if a problem arises it can get cut. should it grow production... maybe not but it will never reach the level of Tulalip. so it will have less of a chance of becoming a problem.

my answer to your question is if they can get the money it most likely will not hurt. Should we start a bunch more like it? no.