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?

HJ, With this theory there would be less fish for the sportsman to retain. Less fish clipped=less fish retained. It's probably not needed anyway cause MOST hatcherys meet there escapement needs anyway. The Duck

WDFW does not want that many hatchery fish returning to their hatcheries! They want to "harvest" most of those fish BEFORE they get back to the hatchery. State law, plus the wild salmonids policy, mandates them to clip most of the hatchery fish.

The unwritten rule for WDFW is to bring back just enough "hatchery steelhead" to satisfy the sport fishermen needs , and then let the commercials boys harvest all the salmon species, but leave just enough escapement to do it all over again!

Cowlitzfisherman

Is the taste of the bait worth the sting of the hook?????

That would not be a good deal. Idaho power and the BPA bought me those fish and I spend thousands of dollars a year chasing them around.. I wanna eat them. Wild steelhead on the other hand are to cool to eat... let em go.

Thanks everyone. I'm just trying to figure out some accusations that a fellow angler came up with the other day, that many of the "wild" fish that he's been having to let go are actually unmarked hatchery fish.

Guess I'll just have to ask him what he's smoking.