The Question I have is why the hatcheries dont use wild brood stock. It would take a very limited amount of spawners to get a viable egg take to supply the hatcheries. If they used wild fish every year for brood which were native to each river, wouldnt theese fish be wild fish, and would'nt it be OK for theese fish to spawn with the rest of the with the rest of the rivers native population. Theese fish would be wild and wouldnt hurt the geene pool as the current hatchery stocks do.

They do it on a small scale at snider creek on the Sol Duc and have been very successfull. On a bigger scale they have always done it on the Vedder and have great returns of big healthy fish.

I have talked to people on the Quileute reservation and forks area hatcheries who have faught to do this for years but the state has firmly objected.

It only makes sense. That must be the biggest problem.

Wild broodstock seems to be the only viable choice to the hatchery "genetics" problem. The Imnaha river (hells canyon) has an excellent weir collection unit for broodstock collection. It looks as if this example would only cause a small amount of stress on the fish. The Kalama broodstock collection doesnt seem as good though. The fish have to be loaded, transported to the hatchery, unloaded which seems as if it would cause more stress on the fish. The Imnaha setup is all in one place, no transport involved.
I am also concerned that not allowing the native fish to spawn upriver, will in turn "confuse" their offspring to the point of no wild fish spawning in its native creek. Instead they will all return to the hatchery. I am aware of the RSI device( Riverside Incubators) but I am not sure how well this works. Plus the fact that hatchery workers/biologists, dont know which creek the native fish naturally spawns in ( unless they radio track it) therefore, the RSI could not be placed in the "natural" areas. Some may think that these minute details don't matter, but there is still so much about salmonid life/behavior that we know nothing about. And how we affect native spawner( for the few that remain) now may forever change the future of its offspring

Tick.Tock.The wonderful state bio's idea of a good hatchery run is one that all returns in the shortest amount of time.Introduction of wild stock only makes things difficult for the managers.And Lord knows we wouldn't want that.

Im not saying this will fix the wild run but only give us more healthy larger hatchery fish. The Bogachiel hatchery only uses 77 hens and 77 bucks to get an estimated 300,000 smolt wich is a number that accounts for mortality. And if some of theese fish spawned naturally it would only inhance the native run. A 154 wild fish would not make much of an impact on the wild run. Im a police Officer on the Quileute reservation and see the nets take more wild fish than this on a daily basis. This october after the big rain we had they took 37,000lbs of coho and chinook in one day. Tell me if that doesnt make you sick.

Its not easy seeing theese things when your a catch and release kind of guy.

An interesting question Rich. One I wish the state would really give us a straight answer to. I have a feeling that it boils down to money more than anything.

The Snider program seems to be working well ... the fish come over a much longer period of time, spawn well on their own within the creek, and are nice quality fish.

Personally, I'd love to see a world where we'd have no need for hatchery fish, but that's pretty unrealistic. They do have their place in many river systems.

Hatchery fish do get a bad rap. Ho0wever, I think the biggest problem though is how the hatcheries are run ... not a "hatchery fish" in itself. Wild broodstock would be a great leap in the direction of running things properly.

I really wish they would do something like the sneider creek program here in SW washington. Perhaps even on the east fork where you have falls and many of creeks that these fish spawn. If we could take some of these fish and help them along it would be great. The monsters and the genetics that these fish have is awesome. The only problem is the E.F. according to the game department only gets 6-800 wild winter fish a year. Not near what is needed for the game department to allow us to try this. It is proven that it works, WHY NOT TRY IT?

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Rich, just look at the problems the Wildcat club has had up at the Skagit. The Wildcat club has tried for a number of years to get a hatchery going on the Skagit using only native fish from the Skagit(from what I know) to enhance Steelhead fishing. Do you think that the WA Fish & Game gods would support this? Heck no! Why? Because it makes sense. Do you think that all spawning areas are being utilized? Heck no! Oh and as far as I know the Wildcat club has supplied all the funding for the project. Got to love our Fish&Game gods. Just my 2 cents. thanks.

Rich,

The benefits of a wild brood stock program for steelead depends on the steelhead management objective. If the objective is to enhance fishing for steelhead, such a programs can help achieve that, but it does so at some risk (more later). The existing programs that stock Chambers Creek steelhead all over the west side also enhance fishing, since that makes up most of the winter steelhead harvest in WA state.

I think there are three reasons that WDFW doesn't use native steelhead broodstocks. First, by precedent, the state has long standing programs that use the Chambers, Skamania, and a very few other hatchery steelhead broodstocks (not a very good reason, but a reason none-the-less).

Second, the Chambers stock spawns early and has been selectively bred to spawn even earlier. This is important to the hatchery program. Juvenile steelhead have to be reared to a minimum of 10 smolts/pound in order to be release with a good chance of survival to adult stage. Most managers try to raise them even larger, to 5 or 6 per pound. This is much easier to do with fish that spawn in January than with native steelhead that spawn in May. Four extra months of rearing makes a huge difference in getting the juveniles large enough to smolt in the spring. If all steelhead hatcheries used native broodstock, many would not be able to release their annual production according to the minimum size rule, and so they would be out of business in one generation.

Third, by dumb luck, the separation of timing between the hatchery broodstocks and the native winter runs has greatly minimized genetic pollution of most native winter steelhead populations throughout western washington. Most native winter runs don't spawn until March or later, and very few Chambers fish spawn after March 15. Consequently, the genetic interaction between hatchery and native winter steelhead has been almost immeasurable.

Some fish geneticists maintain that any hathcery life changes a fish significantly. The native broodstock program that affects a population the least is the type conducted on the Vedder River in B.C. Wild broodstock are used, with the resulting smolts being marked. In the subsequent generation, only unmarked adults are used for broodstock, so the population never acquires more than one generation of hatchery culture in its genetic code. I have to assume this is better than 50 years worth. I think this is the same strategy employed in the Snider Creek program.

I add that comment because studies indicate that wild smolts survive at higher rates than hatchery smolts, on average. So there must be a genetic survival advantage to being wild, even tho the hatchery smolts are frequently larger than their wild counterparts. BTW, I was told that wild steelhead on the Cowlitz survived at 3 times the rate of the hatchery brats last winter, so I believe there is something to this.

Other factors that are important to wild broodstock programs include the fact that it is harder to raise smolts from wild broodstock. It isn't surprising that it is harder to raise wild animals than domestic ones. As an aside, I've had a couple hatchery managers tell me that raising juvenile spring chinook from wild broodstock was the hardest of all. The fish just don't take well to a hatchery environment.

I think it is more important to look to native broodstock for summer run steelhead programs, since the hatchery and wild fish have closer to identical spawn timing. So rearing period advantages are more than cancelled out by adverse genetic interaction.

One more thought, several studies have indicated that hatchery steelhead spawning naturally in the wild are mostly unsuccessful in producing subsequent returning adults, even tho they produce smolts. This is extremely important because those juveniles produced by the hatchery spawners are taking up space that food that could have otherwise been used by native, wild steelhead juveniles. Remember, there are only so many smolts that can be produced by a river - they might as well be ones that have the best chance for survival. The effect is to reduce overall natural steelhead production by having the hatchery fish spawn naturally.

So it comes back to the management objective. We may or may not agree with WDFW regarding some steelhead management goals, but I really don't think they're a bunch of dolts.

I hope this post is helpful in your consideration.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Very interesting thread. Let me put an additional spin on it. In my humble opinion, the finest hatchery steelhead come from the Quinault Hatchery on Cook Creek. I have personally seen many hatchery fish in the high teens and one that tipped the scale at 24 lbs. I have heard rumors that every year there are 30 lb. hatchery fish returning to Cook Creek and/or Salmon River. It would be very interesting to hear how the Quinaults select broodstock. Letty?

Salmo G is right on with his comments. I would like to add that fact that timing ends up being a really big problem because the tribes harvest with non-discriminate methods. They would want to harvest fish from the wild brood stock and due to the timing of the return would kill wild fish while harvesting those from the program. I for one don't want to see increased netting on the wild stocks. Now if the tribes would use a selective method of harvest I could see this working. I believe it would improve the strain of fish.