In it's usual late fashion, WDFW was/is late posting their steelhead smolt plants for this winter's season. They always seem to make the numbers available to the public right at the end of the hatchery runs....a time when the numbers become useless.

I e-mailed the dept. a month ago and actually got a reply (amazing!) that said "we're doing the best we can". Strikes me funny why it is so difficult to print 1 page of numbers that were compiled 2 years previously on time???

Anyway, a few weeks back, I went into the nearest regional office to try and get a copy of this winter's/next summer's smolt plants. A gentleman there was helpful and offered to print me a draft copy of the plants as they weren't ready to go to press yet. Fine.

Now I look on the web site at their "newly updated smolt plants" and come to find they didn't change the numbers at all. In other words, they're using year old numbers and claiming them to be this year's plants. My draft copy proves this out as those numbers are totally different than the ones posted on their website.

What gives?

A few things come to mind...#1 the organization is ineffeicent #2 the news is so bad they don't want to tell us #3 somebody's got them in their back pocket.

Any combination of those three or even all of it...makes one wonder doesn't it!
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Can you scan a copy and post the numbers they gave you?????

I will post the numbers but may not get them out until Monday.....busy weekend.

Eric, can you scan in a Minor Burger for me while you are at it? Thanks
Fishhead5

Eric,

I make my living as a Biologist and work quite frequently with the WDFW. Although artificial production is not my area of expertise, I will take a stab at explaining some of the delays you may be experiencing. Realize that smolt production is tied to a list of variables that may or may not change on an annual basis. These variables include broodstock availability, rearing capacities, juvenile growth rates, release timing (based on size and water conditions), disease problems, and funding scenarios (becoming a big issue). Other factors to consider might include new research related to hatchery/wild interaction, species interation and competition, stock success, carrying capacity, etc. Most recently, fish managers have been bombarded with ESA issues. Is the current stock acceptable? Near my home, we are now for the first time forced to use native summer steelhead broodstock for example. New strategies are being developed on how best to collect native brood while meeting all requirements of the ESA....a massive undertaking. Sometimes there are too few wild fish to mine for brood which further complicates things.

My point is that the outplanting of smolts is much more than simply picking a number and sticking to it. It's very dynamic and changing all the time, much like our rivers. As far as delays are concerned, I won't deny that all agencies could do a better job of this. Happy angling to you.

jed

An update everyone.......The numbers on the WDFW website are now accurate and fit the copy of the numbers I was given. Maybe someone within the dept. read this post and discovered their glitch. But, a week ago, they still had last year's numbers on their site and that was the basis of my question so, it appears to have been fixed.

Riverman, thanks for the thoughtful account of the nightmares of smolt production but my main question was a discrepancy in numbers that were supposedly updated.