ODFW Broodstock Memo

PC, What do you think of what they said??

Fishhead5

Interesting read, POS, and one that raises some serious questions about the broodstock program on the Clackamas river. I'd be most curious to see if similar studies on free-flowing rivers have the same results.

Pretty easy to see what went wrong. Once the eggs were taken and the fish were reared in a hatchery, they ceased to be wild. All fish with "wild" characteristics, (shy, territorial, afraid of fish feeders, not tolerant of handling or disease, etc.) died in the hatchery environment, and all of the fish with domestic characteristics (tolerant of crowded conditions and disease, not afraid of handlers or feeders, etc.) survived. These survivors were not as fit as hatchery broodstock smolts, however, as they likely had some residual wild tendencies that caused them to be more susceptible to the diseases and stresses in the hatchery environment and caused them not to grow as fast or as large. All else being equal, small hatchery fish do not survive as well as large hatchery fish. Larger fish are faster, so they can get away from predators easier. Larger fish can also handle more starvation time until they figure out how to eat without being fed. Usually that means they have to wash out into the ocean during a year of high productivity, where feed can be had just by opening their mouths. That's really why we got those fantastic returns this year - a combination of high spring flows and excellent ocean conditions.

This whole idea of wild fish rescue using hatcheries is flawed, what needs to be done to rescue the wild fish is provide them wild habitat, and provide enough escapement of spawners to fill that habitat. If the habitat is gone and we are never going to get it back, then what exactly is the point of saving "museum piece" wild fish who will never have a place to spawn anyway? Now if we are going to take a dam out then great, let's try to save the genetics of the indigenous populations. But if not, forget it and convert it into a hatchery river and start requiring wild fish release - and banning fishing techniques that cannot accomplish this - on rivers that still have some habitat.

What I read was a bunch of bureucratic (sp) gobelty gook. There were so many if's, and's or but's. None of it could be taken for fact. Get the "facts" and then work on a soultion.

Fishhead5

I've talked to several fisheries biologists about the wild broodstock programs and they've been very skeptical that these fish can reproduce better in a hatchery than in the river. It makes sense to me that they'd reproduce better in the river, after all they've had 10's of thousands of years to develope their reproductive stratagies. Are we humans so arrogant as to think we can do better in a few hundred? After all, we've done nothing but screw it up so far. The benefit of the wild broodstock, to me, seems to be that you don't have to worry about the hatchery fish damaging the wild fish gene pool through interbreeding. It allows a less dangerous hatchery fish program for anglers to be able to keep their catch than having broodstock from other basins. However, if the returns are low, maybe it's not worth the expense. Personally, I prefer to fish for wild steelhead over any other fish. For sport, the wild broodstock fish don't stack up. I'd prefer the fish be left in the river and money be diverted from the hatcheries to habitat restoration. Let the fish have sex au naturale!

does anyone know survival rates for snider creek steelhead or for the quinault's wild broodstock program? they seem to be kinda successful....

Thank you all for your replies both here and privately.

POS Clerk