Here in Oregon most of the newbies can't figure why they aren't catching many fish. The answer is simple for the most part. They aren't there. Most Oregon rivers are now receiving a fraction of the hatchery WS smolts that they received just 15 years ago. A good example is the Sandy River. Close to Portland and heavily fished. Catches used to rang betweeen 10,000-23,000 WS.Now maybe 3,000. Plants of WS smolts have gone from nearly 600,000 to about 150,000. ODF&W economist admits that the catch "data" is way off. Perhaps overestimating the catch by as much as 70 %. Long term students of Oregon Fisheries will notice that runs (smolt production) that contribute to Commercial Fisheries have been cut the least. Is this trend happening in Washington as well ? Is Washington planting far fewer WS smolts than in the past ?

here are the latest numbers for Washington... 2001 Washington Smolt Plants

I looked up some past records of smolt plants, and the general trend has been smaller numbers. This is not true in all cases, but most rivers in Washington are getting smaller plants. This does not begin to explain the apparent lack of hatchery returns this year. These numbers say nothing about the age, quality, or condition of the smolts. I know an ex WDFW employee who said they routinely would dump "fry" just to get rid of them and they would be included in the smolt count even though the suvival rate would be extremely low.
These numbers are from WDFW published stats:

RIVER 1991 2001
Bogey 157,000 211,000
Cowlitz 860,000 972,000
Eloch 114,000 82,000
Hump 304,000 152,000
Kalama 100,000 77,000
Puyallup 162,000 180,000
Sky 128,000 112,000

Interesting...

GS