Imprinting Hatchery Steelhead

I have often heard coho imprint so well that returning hatchery spawners will try to swim up a garden hose if it has water flowing out of it from the rearing pond where that fish was raised. I have also heard that hatchery chinook are not nearly so particular to where they return to spawn within a given river system. What about the Chambers Creek stock brats?

Bill McMillan recently spoke at a WSC Meeting and indicated that mature hatchery males will hang around for months after the hatchery females have spawned and exited/died. I am sure this could be the case but Bill implied (at least to me) that these hatchery males were omni-present throughout the system possibly even the smaller feeder streams. Is this really the case? Or are these males hanging out where they were imprinted as juveniles? Is a mature hatchery male imprinted to Reiter a threat to a wild female that is imprinted to an area around Start-up, four miles downstream?

Maybe if we are so concerned about hatchery/wild fish interaction we should take a good look at imprinting and also at out planting of smolt. Where does a hatchery fish return to as an adult if it is reared/imprinted to the smolt stage at Reiter but then planted as a smolt in the Sultan River? Hummm.

If Chambers Creek hatchery stock return as adults to a close proximity to where they were imprinted as juveniles then there should be relatively little mixing with wild fish assuming of course that there is some regulation as to where they are originally imprinted/released.

Why couldn't you imprint all the fish to return to Reiter then set-up an adult trap down river, say around Hansen's or Nordstrom's to pick up your returning adult hatchery broodstock thus eliminating the possibility of all the "biters" being harvested upstream, and let the rest go to be harvested or captured at the rack at Reiter? Hell the Tribes could even take their share from the downstream trap thus eliminating their impact on the wild fish.

I know, sounds waaaay too easy.

I dont think Hatchery Steelhead are that particular. A good portion seem to go right back to where they are supposed to go but its strange that nearly every trickle between the Quileute and Quinalt that runs into the Ocean gets a decent amount of hatchery steelhead most of these streams arnt planted. Officially I believe that Goodman and Kalalock creeks are the only ones planted but all of them get substantial numbers of hatchery fish. Enough that there are anglers who target them year after year successfully.

Steelhead by nature, tend to stray more than other species.

The idea of tribal harvest at the terminal end is something I've always thought about and should have some merit in a perfect world ... especially in the case of steelhead that usually arrive at our terminal points in very good condition.

Makes too much sense ...

I always wonder about fish that are outplanted to streams with no rearing facilities. Take the Sauk for example. It gets planted, but the returning hatchery adults are left in the river to spawn. On a river like the Skykomish the returning hatchery adults are collected at the hatcheries and taken out of the system.