In order to increase the numbers of fish that return to a hatchery located on a heavily-fished body of water, wouldn't it be beneficial to them to finclip only a small number of the smolts that they release? By doing this I would think that this could increase the number of fish that will return to the hatchery to spawn, thereby increasing their output (that is, if they have room for the additional output).

Worst case scenerio they get too many fish and simply recycle. Best case scenerio a lot of fish are caught (and released) and then we have more fish in the future.

What is the plausability of this X-Files of the Forest kind of conspiracy?
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