I was hoping to poll the resident fish biologists on this board to explain something I observed on Saturday...

My fishing partner bonked a couple of hatchery kelts on Saturday...as he was cleaning them I noticed one or two stray eggs left in the body cavity, I also noticed distinctly new and tiny sets of egg skeins beginning to grow already in their bellies. Is this normal?

Yes.

DUH !!!
Peace Superfly

I bet those spawned out fish will taste real good too !!!!!!!
Peace Superfly

Those tiny scanes of eggs are for next year. The fish can either stay in the river for another year or head out to the salt and chill till next december. From what I understand these fish do not grow at all over this next year and were actually the biggest they will ever be before they spawned this winter.

He said they get ~7% return spawning on hatchery fish.

Im not a bio, but the fish checker at wilsons recently gave me the story when I asked the same question.

Thanks to those of you that you responded that actually offered information.

I hope somebody will offer some information regarding the biology behind the observation...

Why did he kill them?????

MMMMMMMM...Kelt! A hatch fish makes it past the gauntlet and survives spawning and your buddy klunks it...if he's that hungry I can send some catfood UPS, cause it'll probably taste better than those boots he's got on the BBQ right now.

So both guys I was with this weekend were making fun of ME for saying that they were spawners, snakes, no good, cat food etc...so you can settle with the eye rolling. My girlfriend used to do that...

I used to have the attitude that all hatchery fish must be bonked regardless of where they were in the spawning process. For the past five years I have reconsidered my position and decided that it would be in my best interest as a fisherman to let them go.

I'd never eat one again, but my first year steelhead fishing I tried one...
how was I supposed to know, that sucker was bright! Too bad you couldn't say the same thing about the meat...

I obviously couldn't have kept many or I wouldn't be asking questions about their physiology...

You'd think people who obviously fancy themselves a bunch of comedians would actually be funny, I suppose that would asking a little much around here.

Gooose, thats great, getting your point across without typing a word!
Ng

You would think that someone who fancies himself some information regarding the downriver steelhead would ask more than a yes or no question.

Most animals know not to wee-wee (that one's for you, hilton ) in their own food.

If you and gooose are the only sources of info. (food in your analogy) on this board then consider yourself wee wee'd on...otherwise, if you have nothing to add or positive to say please confine your imbecilic remarks and posts to yourselves...

A class act on display...

Thanks for posting a picture of yourself, I knew I'd seen you somewhere before...

I know you are but what am I?

Geeez, is this for real? I must admit though that at one point I had tears rolling down my cheeks from laughing
I gotta ask DJ-how did you put that on there?

Laughing until I pee,

Crayfin

Step 1: Find and download image .
Step 2: Upload picture .
Step 3: When finished uploading the page will show you your image. Right click on it and save the link location.
Step 4: Create post and use the Image button below your post window and paste (Ctrl+V for us Windows folks, Mac folks probably use an Open Apple/Closed Apple key sequence ) the URL into the window that pops up.

That's about the gist of it. If you need practice just start a thread of naked Jennifer Connely pictures and see if it works.

Hey I don't care how old or spawned out they were.. Thanks for getting hacthery fish out of the system thats important to the survival of wild fish...