Looks like elparquito is too lazy to make a change also and is willing to roll over and accept things the way they are. Blame it on politics or blame it on ocean conditions and watch things get worse and worse without taking responsibility or any action. You sound like an excellent candidate for wdfw. Do you work for them? They are looking for a few fat men like you. Did you happen to suggest a way to make things better in your post? I am sorry if I missed it because it seemed as if you contributed absolutely nothing.

Wow. You should have waited one more minute before posting and smoked a big fatty. You are one of the more mentally challenged folks to blast insults here when you have nothing intelligent to add to a discourse. Why don't you get your head out of your own butt and smell the world for what it is? There are a LOT of issues affecting salmon and steelhead runs besides the obvious targets you rail against. But you put it on a few guys on a fishing forum? It's easy to insult people online you have never met, perhaps you should go to a meeting or two and introduce yourself by your "handle". That would be fun. Keyboard jerk offs never do that. Why has it taken so long to come back? It's funny that You have just posted a private message to me for "insulting "you 9 months ago while I am responding to your rant!! Ears burning? Do you even have ears? You obviously have no brains between them! Bob R

Well then, what have you personally done to take responsibility and action?

Typing some words on the internet isn't really action and contribution.

Show us how you've lead the way in real life. Demonstrate or STFU.

The track record of hatcheries that did intensive selection on few traits such as size, age at maturity, and so on have gone down in flames. The most egregious was Doc Donaldon's super trout. Selected for fast growth, high fecundity, etc. One year they picked live eggs out of the trays rather than dead because inbreeding caught up big time.

The hatchery spawns what the managers let get through. The harvest rates are 90+%. Kinda narrows the gene pool.

In my experience, the long-term successful hatchery programs have been those that spawn and release large numbers of juveniles. The smaller the program the more problems.

The idea that "plant more" is really getting tested in the N Pacific as AK is pushing, I believe, mega millions of not billions of pink out. There are lots of correlations showing that more pinks give you less zooplankton, Chinook, sockeye, coho, SRKWs, and shearwaters (and probably other seabirds). More is not always the answer.

Bob r I have a life and don't visit this site very often. I responded to your PM to me telling me not to insult people and I pointed out that you are a hypocrite. Apparently you had a hard time with that. Feel free to post the PMs.

Carcass, the track record of a few of the tribal hatcheries speak for themselves with regards to salmon and steelhead. Those trout that you speak of are less relevant and cannot be applied as well to salmon and steelhead.
Inbreeding is a good point and a definite concern. I believe that it could be minimized by working towards more genetic testing and mating across year classes. Evaluating scale samples could also help with this.
Even if they did 80 to 85 percent of mating in this fashion it should move the needle towards some natural selection instead of the reverse selection with the random mating that we have now.
Not sure I understand your comment about the successful hatcheries spawning and releasing a large number of juveniles? Are you talking about spawning a large number of jacks? If so, could you provide a few examples?

Planting more it's not really defined here. I would say that each river should be planted up to the carrying capacity of each specific River.

I'll re-ask the question that you failed to answer above, what do YOU do to change the dynamic of what is going on? Nothing if you only run your mouth on line. As far as insults and being a hypocrite I never said I don't insult people on line. I just say you are a gutless wonder for not going to meetings and then throwing insults at people you don't agree with on line. It's easy when you don't have to look them in the eye. I try only to use insults in retaliation or when other folks are expressing their opinion and someone like you doesn't like their answer and starts to get all snotty like a school -yard jerk-off. Get some volume of meaningful posts like the people you run down first. I can't hold a candle to the collective knowledge of the posters you choose to insult. You should post on the dark side, you'll fit right in. Bob R

The V=Chambers Creek steelhead, when one delves deeply into how the program was actually run, reflected intense inbreeding and is likely one of the reasons for its collapse in Chambers.

Obviously, there are well run operations, and poorly run ones. I tend to hark back to Lloyd Royal's view that the river carrying capacity is relatively meaningless as far as hatchery production is concerned. The capacity of concern is the estuary and the ocean, and it seems to be getting exceeded.

I think hatcheries should serve one primary purpose, and that is to produce fish as mitigation (only). As such, they should be located as near to the fishery to be mitigated as possible. I also think that mitigation has to include escapement, and that the spawners upstream of a dam need to be replaced as much as the catch downstream.

I don't think that "enhancement", where more fish are produced than would have naturally, is a evil and destructive practice for the ecosystem.

And, to piggyback on some of the comments to this thread, I put my name on these ideas and put them out in the fisheries literature and at fisheries meetings.

Bob R, did you contribute something to this topic? Because if you did I missed it.

Carcass, the Chambers Creek steelhead were never naturally selected. They are probably one of the better examples of inbreeding. Natural selection avoids the negative effects of inbreeding.

Obviously carrying capacity of a river includes it's estuary but I would disagree that it includes the entire ocean. Protected Birds, seals, and sea lions eat many of the fish that would count towards the carrying capacity. Again the government has interfered with natural selection here by protecting them.

Your definition of mitigation seems to be limited to dams only. Mitigation should include but not be limited to all environmental and human factors (including the significant increase in commercial catch rates). Runs that were present in the 70s were far more abundant then the ones present today. Hatchery plants should mitigate the loss have those fish also but my suggestion is not to just plant more genetically inferior fish but to work our way towards a more efficient system where we get a higher percentage of fish survival and adults returning. It really is common sense and a no-brainer as it would save money in the long-term with feed cost and staff cost along with utilities and Facilities.
Usually when people have nothing to contribute and no further argument they want to fight physically, issue insults, or intimidate. I do the same ad you do in putting my name on it in writing to the wdfw. I find that the greatest opposition to change is uneducated folks like Bob r, El poquito, and nick.

Incidentally I don't believe that you responded to the question about a hatchery successfully spawning juveniles.

If the fish are sexually mature they should be used in a manner commensurate with their presence on the wild spawning grounds. We don't know enough to understand how the jacks, resident steelhead, etc. contribute to the run but they do.

One of the major surprises during my career was that anadromous and resident my kiss are the same fish. I am pretty sure that I handled a few wild steelhead smolts that had spawned before smolting.

To be clear, I was speaking about putting my name on professional papers/talks/books/etc. WDFW will simply ignore me.

I agree that hatcheries should mitigate for documented loss due to habitat destruction. I do not consider increased fishing effort/catch to be something to mitigate for. You fish for what the ecosystem can produce if you are using the open ocean. And, capacity has to include the ocean because if food decreases, sedation increases then you get less back.

Here's the full spring/summer CR forecast document released yesterday...



Buffered upriver springer run-size puts us at 57.1K

57.1K puts the NON-treaty impact allocation at 1.50% for season-setting.

Commercials get 20% and sports get 80%.... leaving a rec impact allocation of 1.2%.

1.2% impact leveraged against a 10% release mortality says we will be able to handle 12% of the run to stay within the impact cap... well at least til the runsize update.

57.1K (0.12) = 6852 total handle available for the 2020 mainstem CR springer season.

Those ~6800 will then be split 75:25 between the below Bonne vs above Bonne contingent.

Set your expectations accordingly.

Solid info eyefish. Very informative. Thank you.

Yes, thanks for the info. I'm already tying flies for spring trout East of the mountains. Had a blast last year in MT. Maybe Canada trout this year. One common denominator is that my $$ are going elsewhere. Feel for the lower C communities that are missing out on those $$ 2 yrs in a row. The only exercise my boat is gonna get again this year is PS crab and short PS Chinook opener, and maybe some coho. Hopefully the PDO will change and the Blob will disappear for a full cycle to bounce things back. Crossing my fingers.

Just in case WDFW doesn't read Piscatorial Pursuits every day, I'm copying down all the suggestions to improve hatchery practices and sending it to them. That way they can start implementing them with the next arrival of hatchery broodstock. Better results are only a couple years out!

I know you are being sarcastic Salmo but I have already done that. It will take more than a couple of years/ generations to undo what WDFW had done to the genetics.

Hanker, wrong again. Salmo G has not worked for WDFW.

To be fair, the issue of hatchery reform has been an on-going discussion for the past 25+ years. The Hatchery Science Review Group (HSRG) came up with some ideas. They recommended that hatchery management should be based the following principles: 1) setting clear goals; 2) scientific defensibility; and 3) monitoring, evaluation and adaptive management.

https://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/research/divisions/efs/hatchery/review.cfm

However, there is always lots of disagreement among those items. For example, what should the hatchery goals actually be? Maximize returns to the river? Maximize returns to the fishery? Minimize interactions with wild fish? Supplement wild fish spawning? Meet ESA recovery goals? Jump start extirpated stocks? Should the programs be integrated or segregated? Should they mitigate for hydropower and lost habitat, or just enhance fishing?

Reasonable people can disagree on the answers to those questions. So there is plenty of room for discussion and debate on this BB. What we must avoid is throwing insults to the folks contributing to this thread. We’re all frustrated with the run-size estimates but throwing insults at your fellow anglers on this BB doesn’t help anyone.

I would note that the low returns for the Columbia Basin hatcheries are not confined to those run by WDFW. Oregon, Idaho, and the Tribes are all suffering from low run-size estimates for 2020. So if you want to make the case that all hatcheries are bad and all of them are run poorly, go ahead. And while you’re at it, you can join the Native Fish Society. They’d love to have you as a member.

Hatcheries are not a perfect solution to anything. They can always be run better. The staff doesn’t always have control over the factors that influence their mission (e.g., water temperatures, disease outbreaks, adult returns). So it is not appropriate to evaluate a hatchery based on factors that can’t be controlled by the people being evaluated. For example, if there aren’t enough adults returning to the hatchery for broodstock because they were all caught off the BC coast, you can’t blame the on-site hatchery manager and the staff. It ain’t their fault that anglers in the Columbia River are getting low-holed by the commercial fishermen in BC.

Based on the information I have seen, the problem for lower-48, and much of BC, is occurring in the Gulf of Alaska. We damn well have pretty good idea of the proximal cause but that is probably a reflection of overall N Pacific conditions.

The ocean is having huge problems in productivity for salmonids and is likely based in problems with the food chain. Whether or not the food chain problems are human(fishery) driven, human (climate) driven, or a combination remains to be seen but it must be looked into now.

What hasn't been mentioned here, or I missed it, is what has happened to the Big C wild stocks. Unless they are performing significantly better than their hatchery cousins, the problem is not how the hatcheries are being run.

I do not work for WDFW and and I am not fat. I am not lazy and I'm very fit. I know many very capable scientists that do work for the WDFW, and NOAA and get the unique opportunity to talk/discuss/speak with them on a daily basis.

I also had the great opportunity to bend the ear of a WDFW Commissioner on a weekly basis during his tenure there. We are still great friends today. He listened to what I had to say (as an educated voice for recreational fisheries) and acted on that.

Anyone who has half a working brain cell left in their head knows that 99.9999999% of anything that is possibly useful in the management of our fisheries is done behind the scenes, behind closed door, and not out here in the open on this board.

Believe it or not, Arm Chair Internet Non-Educated Fisheries Experts are generally really not listened too.

The guys like Salmo, Curt, Cohoangler, and Carcassman are the folks we should be listening too.....

There are quite a few highly educated "lurkers" here that really should step up and tell us all what morons we truly all are, but they refuse too. Can't really say I blame them.

Sorry your feelings are hurt.

But hey, preach away. I'm sure someone is listening.

Mr. Parker - Thanks for the thanks. I appreciate it. However, we should add Fish Doc to that list. Even though he's just an eye doc from Aberdeen, his insight and contributions are certainly better than mine.

I have found over the years that even explaining the simplest and lowest hanging fruit about fish and fisheries management is a lost cause on the interwebz...though I appreciate that some continue to do it, sooner or later someone may learn a thing or two.

Fish on...

Todd