Congratulations to Bob Ball on being featured in the Seattle Times Sports Section (3/16/03 ed.) The article is on page D11, right side column.

For those of you who don't get the paper, see the following web address:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/fishing/

It's the first listing on the webpage.

Good Job Bob and thanks for showing your concern to one of Washington State's fisheries.

Sincerely,

Salmonfisherjeff

Yes, thanks Bob!

Cheers, Darin

Damn, didn't see that in the Seattle edition. Nice job guys! That hen on the right is FAT. Beautiful fish.

How's the program going this year?

Nice job Bob!!! Good thing you had JoJo with you to catch those nice fishes!!!

Very funny...but atleast I am a world renowned flyfishing guru!! :p

Well I thought you were there to just take pics since you are a full time Fly Guy

THAT IS SO KOOL!!!!

That's a cool program.

Do the guides use regular customers to catch the fish? Or do the guides just do it on their own?

I'd be very interested in buying a day of fishing to support that program; meaning I'd like to catch the fish used to propogate the species. Any chance I could get in on that?

My what a bad hair day that was

I didn't spend a great number of days in the 'Duc this year during the timing that we normally catch fish for this ... but returns seemed to be pretty decent and we've seen a number of downstream hens from the program that spawned on their own

While we usually do a broodstock run once or twice a year on a day off, customers are always welcomed to partcipate in the program ... you just gotta make sure you do a January date because we only take fish in December and January as we're trying to target the early wild fish that so many say don't exist

An official FYI for some of you out there ... allredds counted prior to March 15 are considered by the state / tribe to be hatchery fish redds ... whatever!!

Is JoJo a guide? When we used to be able to catch and release the Sky natives in March and April I used to see him a lot. He is probably the only drift boat that actually rowed AROUND me when I was bank fishing by myself in a drift, never even touching the water....and he did it every time I saw him. Thanks JoJo, I wish other fisherman had 1/100th of your fishing etiquette. He was always in a Wild Hair.....one of your old boats Bob?

I've always said if you wanted an answer to a question regarding WA fishing, this is where you ask it.

What are the cons (negatives) of a state-wide broodstock program for WA steelhead? Reading the Mr. Gibbons' statements he does not seem to support it much.

It seems to me the way it should be. Can't a wild fish be ripened and spawned in a hatchery facility without killing them nowadays? (So the 10-12% of hens and 1% of bucks may come back again and spawn?) So you clip the babies fins, release them after two years, and they come back as "hatchery" a couple of years later. If the "hatchery" fish figure out how to spawn naturally, their offspring come back as "wild" fish, and can compete "naturally" for spawning areas themselves with no harm done.

God knows the hatchery program around here could use some new blood. For 30 years now the Reiter/Tokul facility has been taking the eggs and sperm from fish that 1) can make it through the small holes in nets, and 2) do not bite anything once they reach their terminal. What do you get after 30 years? A 4-5 pound fish that won't bite.

I know, Smalma, that the state is worried about losing the "earliness" of the Chambers Creek stock, striving for a Nov/Dec hatchery return. But what about this year when the stupid things appear to have fallen off the edge of the earth, and almost NONE make it back? On the heels of last years best return in many, many years? The natives in the Sky system seem to have found their way OK home before the rivers closed.

Why no bag the winter Chambers Creek stock and go with a broodstock program on the Sky system so we could have good fishing in Jan, Feb, March, and April, keeping fish (big, strong fish) without adipose fins and releasing those with adipose fins? Anything could be better than this year around here, anything.....

Your thoughts?

Ike

There are lots of cons, but I believe most are outwighed by the pros if we get cooperation to make the programs work ...

some examples:

increased return = increased netting

wild fish killed to make almost wild fish

fish must be killed according to WDFW to test for diseases

hens must be killed to get more than 50% of eggs

people see the clip and consider them hatchery fish even if it's ventral and you're directly sacrificing wild fish to support hatchery harvest

Biggest WDFW problem in my eyes: if hatchery fish are needed (in a perfect world we would not need broodstocking), someone else does things better ...

I know a hatchery worker 'somewhere in the state' actually asked to mix in local stock and was told he'd be looking for a new job if he did ...

State needs to do something though ... way too much inbreeding in current programs!

Much as all other aspects of our fishing world, education and cooperation are key in making the brood programs work!

PS ... That was one of my old boats.

Jojo is one of the most polite guys on that river...most everyone else should model their river etiquette after how he acts.

Plus he is one damn good fisherman as well!...he ruled that river with his driftboat!!!!

Brood stock programs have done some good in places. The Wynooche and maybe Satsop come to mind. Other rivers in desperate shape might use them too, like the Nisqually and Puyallup. But why have one on a river with a strong wild stock like the Sol Duc? Then expand it to the Calawah? Could be screwing with some of the the last best wild runs we have. It's a feelgood program for the guides, and I applaud any effort to help fish with good intentions, but wonder how necessary it is.

SB ... the portion of these runs that we're trying to help are not in the best of shape.

All fish taken are in Dec. and Janury where there have been huge drops ...

If hatchery season anglers would let early wild fish go (many wild fish hold with them on their way up at terminal areas) and if tribe didn't net 5 days a week in December and January, it might not be needed ... but that's a BIG IF!!!

SB -- more regular Duc fishermen could vouch for this than I can, but there's a big difference fishing for nates on the Duc from March to the close than in December and January.

But you do raise the same question about expanding the program to the Calawah as I had.

Does expanding the program mean tethering Calawah fish for Calawah broodstocking, or planting Sol Duc smolts in the Calawah?

Ike -
Much of the decision of whether to use local wild brood stock on the Skykomish depends on whether you would consider the traits that characterize Skykomish wild stocks worth keeping or not.

All the work to date with hatchery steelhead spawning in the wild has found that the they are much less productive than a pair of wild fish in producing smolts/adults. It is believed that this is due to the "domestication" of the fish. That is rearing of the fish in a hatchery environment selects for different behaviors than wild rivers. How quickly that occurs is dependent on the length of time in the hatchery (both the number of generations and the length of freshwater rearing). Typically with steelhead the hatchery rearing is compressing two years of freshwater growth into one year. That makes steelhead very sensitive to this "taming" of the wild stock. A successful wild brood stock would increase the survival of an individual female's eggs 50 to 100 times. However the price of that success is subjecting those fish to very different selective pressures than those found in the wild.

One of the real difficult aspects of a wild brood stock is the issue of spawn timing. Most genetists would agree that a successful program should apply equal selective pressure across a population trait. Sticking with the your Skykomish example a successful hatchery program would want to develop equal numbers of smolts from all protions of the spawn timing. On the Skykomish wild spawning begins about this time of the year (mid-March), peaks in late April and continues into June. That means the goal of the program would be to take eggs for 1/2 of the smolts from March to late April spawners and the other 1/2 from late April to June spawners.

It has been determined that successful returns on smolts is dependent on planting of smolts at appropriate sizes in May. In this case about 6/# (about 8 inches long). With modern fish culture methods it is possible to meet that size threshold in only a year of freshwater rearing with the early spawning fish but not with the later spawning fish (having a shorter time to rear the fish). The manager is left with the choice of using only the early fish (those capable of reaching "size" in a year) or going to a 2 year freshwater rearing program (use spwaners across all spawning times).

In short it is nearly impossible to develop a hatchery return from wild brood stock without causing some hatchery selection occurring in even the first generation. For this reason the interaction of the returning hatchery fish with wild fish on the spawning grounds would be a concern. The concerns would be both ones of productive and genetic.

An additional concern with the wild brood stock is the management of fisheries using wild brood stock production. With net fisheries in the "Bolt case area" how does the tribe catch its share without over fishing the wild stock? For a recreation fisheries to access all the returning hatchery production fishing would have to fish all spring - do you want fishing all spring on top of the wild spawning? When wild populations are depressed? There are a number of other management concerns.

The State's wild salmonid polciy (WSP) sets some standards for the amount of hatchery/wild interactions. With different stocks (Chambers verus Skykomish) that interaction is limited to less than 1% (fish spawning at the same time and place) while with similar stocks (an unchanged wild brood stock and wild fish) the standard is 10%. This effectively sets the relative size of the hatchery programs relative to the size the of the wild populations. Using the characteristics of the Chamber's Creek fish, the wild Skykomish steelhead, and assuming that the wild brood stock program can minimize the above concerns my analysis found that a hatchery program using Chambers Creek fish can be several times larger (number of returning adults) than one using a wild brood stock while having the same genetic impacts (meeting the WSP guidelines).

To recap - On the Skykomish using wild brood stock will likley -

1) Brood stock produced fish spawning with wild fish will reduce the productivity of the naturally spawning fish.

2) Brood stock prodcued fish will have genetic impacts on the wild population.

3) Will complicate fisheries management with likely adverse impacts on the wild population.

4) With current policies the number of returning hatchery adults from wild brood stock program will be much smaller than that from Chambers Creek program.

While the above discussion has been neccessarily brief and incompete (see Bob's list) hopefully you can see the flavor of the concerns. The State has determined that on the Skykomish that with a wild brood stock program the negatives outwieght the postivies and it would be detrimental to the wild population.

How much risk to the wild population would you accept for a wild brood stock program?

Tight lines
Smalma

Does anyone know if the existing wild broodstock programs in Washington have anything like a systematic monitoring component? For instance, isn't it important to keep track of the relative productivity of natural spawners versus hatchery spawned wild broodstock to determine how useful these programs are? If you found that the total run size was relatively constant, yet the proportion of natural spawners dropped while being replaced with the offspring of hatchery spawned broodstock, seems like you've been wasting your time and money and not improving the fishing or escapements.
How are "successes" and/or "failures" being measured in these programs?

Good question NM. Unfortunately, on the coast, the best we can do is form an opinion based on the collaborative observations of guides & anglers.

The Quillayute Tribe has been less than cooperative in helping to gauge the returns we're seeing off of this. I honestly can't say if it's through indifference or untruthful reporting on their part. A good example of this was an "unofficial comparison" of reported tribal catch versus a rough estimate of numbers of Snider fish caught by attendees of the Guides' Association meeting. The sport catch of those in the room was over four times that of what the tribe reported ... obviously, the numbers the tribe was giving didn't jive ... unless we've magically bred fish to swim around nets

The best we can do is to look at total escapement, which is up despite a lack of help from the tribe in respect to harvest ... as well as spawning activity within that section of river.

Russ Thomas, an older fella (in his 80's), has walked the streams of the area for over 60 years keeping an eye on things. He's noticed a large increase in spawning activity with the creek itself, as well as the mainstem 'Duc in that area, and even some nearby creeks that have not seen fish in some time.

I believe it helps to have the destination of the fish in non-angling waters as we do here so you don't have a terminal end area fishery.

And after some discussion with Sparkey last night on chat, there is one other thing that I think is important to note regarding the project in this area:

These streams are still catch and kill and a number of the fish that are used for this project are donated by clients that would otherwise have taken the fish home. Obviously, this isn;t the case in my boat ... but the majority of fish come from catch-and-kill boats and I'm happy to see these fish go towards helping out the river rather than simply filling up the bottom of a cooler.

Bob, thanks for the considerate response. I'm a big believer that having a long-term perspective like that of the man you mention is extremely valuable, even if it isn't part of an accepted "scientific" survey. It would be great if he kept records of the numbers of fish he's seen though, to help document those changes for others to appreciate.

Is there a plan to discontinue broodstocking when spawning escapements reach some desired threshold on Snider Creek, or will this be an ongoing program to enhance the fishing opportunities in the Sol Duc?

NM -
The Kalama steelhead research crew is in the middle of the evulation of a wild steelhead brood stock program in SW Washington. Believe the early results indicate that the smolt to adult survival has been good however it is too early to answer some of yur other questions. It is likely another 4 or 5 more years will be neccesaary - perhaps more.

A wild brood stock program on the Sauk River in the NW Washington during the early 1980s had poor smolt to adult survivals. In part that may have been due to the extremely late spawning timing of the wild fish. That made it neccessary to rear the fish for two years prior to release of the smolts. Recaptures of marked returning fish indicated that it was unlikely that returns matched the number of fish used for brood stock.

I don't know much about the Snider Creek program; I'm sure that Bob could provide more details. I would expect that if the returns of adults is anything like the Chambers fish in the system (better than 5% smolt to adult survival) there should be enough returnees around to get a feel for the success of the program. With 50,000 to 100,000 smolt @ a 5% return rate one would expect 2,500 to 5,000 returning adults. Even if the net fishery was catching 60% of the run (beleive the netting schelude is set up to take something like 55% of the Chambers run) there should be 1,000 to 2,000 fish in the fishery. I would expect that to create a "hatchery meat hole" at the mouth of Snider Creek. In addition the use of the early returned fish should produce early returning fish so that early season (Dec-Jan) sport catches should have a high portion of these hatchery fish.

Tight lines
Smalma

Okay more on all of this

The majority of the returnees do come back early which is the goal of the project ...

Smalma, at 5 days a week, we're pretty sure the Quillayutes taking more than 55-60% of the run ... lots of fish go bye-bye w/o fish tickets so we'll never know those numbers for sure nor will we know the exact return we get off Snider since that timeframe is netted so heavily.

One only needs to listen to some of old timers and even some of the younger community members to see how things have changed. I'm not talking tall "fish stories", but more down to earth visualzations of what was present many decades ago (before many fisheries actual suffered some lower returns in the 60's on the heels of terrible logging practices). We're talking of how local residents would simply go down to pretty much any hole on any of the rivers in the days before Christmas to obtain a couple of steelhead for dinner ... and not our typical Chambers fish ... many many recount tales of mid 20's fish on the table for Christmas. There are few of these around anymore.

Until we see some reduction in harvest pressure on our early fish NM, I don't think we'll see the desire on this end to end the program. We have however, "voluntarily" (with some state prodding) cut the plants back to 50,00 the past few years.

Given we generally use less than 50 fish nowadays, we're certainly seeing more back than we're taking. There is no objective for fish of a ceratin size like a tribal program down the coast ... we're simply looking to maintain a certain timing of the run that is under tremendous pressure (partially because of the Chambers fish). Some Snider fish are big, some small, some inbetween, different life cycles are being observed, some repeats ... that's what we're trying to do ... keep things as close to what Ma Nature intended as possible. If there comes a day we have no kill for sporties and we can get the tribe to back off the 5 day a week schedule ... perhaps there will no longer be a pressing need to help this portion of the run as much.

B Gray ... I forgot to mention that the Calawah portion would be an entirely separate program. There is no intention of planting 'Duc fish elsewhere.

Smalma ... As I mentioned, Snider is above the fishing deadline on the 'Duc so there is no hatchery meat hole ... although more than a few anglers have been caught poaching there. Lots of folks watch it closely and many know the warden personally (as in home & cell number) and he's been known to make runs up there on any report of illegal activity

Bob -
Sorry - missed the fact that Snider creek is in a non-fishing area - my limited knowledge once again exposed!

I seem to recall that during the 1990s the total Quillayute Chambers hatchery smolt plant was in the 150,000 range. If that is correct then the Sol Duc brood program should be producing 25 to 40% of the total hatchery escapement from the net fishery (assuming that the non-reporting problem is the same for either group).

Having that many hatchery produced fish spawning with the wild population causes me some concern. Especially with a depressed portion of the wild population. Sounds as if the majority of the early spawners would of hatchery origin and likely have hatchery induced behaviors that would affect the survival of the offspring of hatchery-hatchery and hatchery-wild crosses. If the two groups of about equal size only a 1/4 of the spawning population of the early fish would be wild-wild crosses. Not sure that is the best way to protect those fish of concern.

Tight lines
Smalma

Ceratinly a concern Smalma ... but not really the case I don't think. As you pounted out earlier this year, the harvest rates of all caught fish in the early portion of the run are very high. Most anglers consider these hatchery fish and do keep them (we treat them as wild fish) ... so I don't think we're seeing a massive influx of these fish spawning on their own, but I'm happy to see some of them that do due to the harvest placed on the runs in that timeframe.

It's funny that we often see so much concern over the brood programs from the state. Frankly, the way I look at it, if the state & tribe moved away from such a harvest-oriented fishery (especially in that timeframe), there'd likely be no need.

Beacsue of the offical state policy of counting all redds prior to March 15 as hatchery fish, it's tough to provide hard data for our early stocks, but I think regardless of the future of total C&R on these rivers, there should be little argument that it should at least be in place through February to help the early portion of the run.

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this idea Smalma, especially in respect to one of your local streams ... the Pilchuck that has seen "decent" escapement numbers at season's end but few early returners according to a number of knowledgable anglers I know in that area.

Thanks Smalma, can't argue with any of your thoughts on a broodstock program on the Sky system. I do think it has its place on some systems however.

Smalma, I really appreciate your participation on this BB. I don't think anybody has a better perspective on the complex problem of allocating fish here in WA. Besides your biology/fisheries knowledge, you know the dilema inside-out from the Olympia/politics/budget angle, the unfortunate Boldt case implications, and the intense passion that we sporties have for the fish. And how long have you been at in WA.....28 years?

Bob, you might as well be fishing for Yellowfin Tuna in the Pilchuck in December, the early component is long, long gone. The state began trapping the Pilchuck in the early 1920's for these magnificent native December fish. Even though it is my favorite river and I live only minutes away, I don't even wet a line until the beginning of Feb.

I think you could say the same thing about the whole Snohomish system. Until 2003 you could kill any native on the Pilchuck and most Snohomish system rivers through December. Even in the no kill years the ban did not take effect until Jan. 3rd at the earliest. December is also the month the tribes have historically harvested almost all their fish since the Boldt decision.

Catching a native fish in December on Snohomish system rivers has become impossible.

Can you say extinct?

Ike

Bob -
Are you suggesting that substantial numbers of wild fish in the Quillayute spawn prior to March 15th? If so how many? Does that mean that the escapement of wild Quillayute steelhead is actually large than what the State has reported (Have they erred on the side of the wild fish?)?

The Snohomish system is my home turf and I know a little more about it than the Quillayute. It is there that I learned to fish for these additive steelhead. Like you have talked with the old-timers about what their fishing was like. The old gentlemen that taught me to fish in the early 1960s developed their skills prior to World War II. During the Great Depression they would pool their nickels to buy gas so they could make a run to the river. They literally were fishing to feed their families. I had a number of conversation with them and they consistently reported they didn't bother with steelhead fishing until after the first of the year - there was not enough fish in the river to risk their $$ on not getting fish.

What is the difference between the experience of those on the coast on those on the Snohomish. I believe it is related to the hydrographs of the systems. The Quillayute is a rain dominated system with fall flows occurring starting in March. While the North Puget Sound river's hydragraphs are drive by spring run-offs fed by snow melt. Typically they have their highest daily flows in the late May, June and July - the coast streams highest flows are in the late fall/early winter. This influence the timing of the wild spawning. The timing of the spawn is such that the fry emerge from the gravels during periods of favorable survival flows.

On the coast the fry find good conditions in June while in the North Sound the fry don't find similar conditions until late July or early August. As a result the Quillayute fish begin spawning in early February and continue through May. The Puget Sound fish beginning spawning in early to mid-March and continue thorugh June. I have observed that wild fish tend to arrive near their spawning areas typically 6 weeks or so prior to spawning. The would mean the onset of the significan wild runs would be in mid-December on the coastal (a few fish would be even earlier). While in the Puget Sound region the onset in late Janaury/early February.

A common wild fish myth was the Thanksgiving run of wild fish in the Puget Sound region. Until the mid-1980s these early wild fish were common. I remember those fish well. They were in fishable numbers around Thanksgiving, were larger than the hatchery brats (typcially 10 to 14# - some larger) and were fairly mature fish -spwaning in late December/early January. Following "Bolt" scale sample revealed that they were hatchery fish and with the onset of mass marking of the all hatchery plants these early wild fish disappeared. They were of course the 3 salt hatchery fish that tend to return earlier than the 2-salts.

To the Pilchuck -
Much of the above applies to the "Chuck". In the mid-1980s escapement had fallen to just a few hundred fish with the wild catch being mostly in the month of March. With March closures and wild steelhead release required when runs were below escapement goals the numbers of fish rebounded until the escapement was well over a 1,000 fish. When harvest was again allowed (harvest rates in the 10 to 20% range) the wild catches in Janaury and Febraury were larger than the old catches in March. Of course that is due in large part to larger run sizes. The point is with March closures the run size increased and we saw more early fish. If the wild population would there have been more early fish - I think so. For decades the steelhead seasons on most Puget Sound rivers closed the end of February - however beginning in the 1960s and 1970s there were more liberal season resulting in over fishing of the wild populations (note that occurred prior to the tribal fishing).

It is interesting to note on those river system that have been either closed or managed under Wild Steelhead Release all season (Nooksack) have not seen large increases of early fish.

Tight lines
Smalma

Ike -
Thanks for the kind words.

See my comments to Bob about early wild fish.

I have fished the state waters for more than 50 years have been in the "business" for more than 3 decades.

Tight lines
Smalma

A good question Smalma, plus more ...

Why are even counting redds before March 15 on these streams if they're only hatchery fish?

Why are we marking every single scrape on the bottom of the river as a redd? Obviously, many are test reds, yet they're being marked with ribbons?

It probably cancels one another out ...

What I'm trying to get at is that you CANNOT judge the health of any run by the final number you get at the end of the season (thus my mention of the Pilchuck) if you've simply wiped out the early portion and boosted the latter portion.

That's not good for the fish or the fisherman ... both an important part of the management circle!

Bob -
Two of the points that you have made in this discussion are;
1) The catches are being under reported &
2) Escapements are being over counted.

Further you seem to feel that those errors are substantial. Just for discussion sake let's assume that both are off by 20%. In addition let's see what that means on a hypothical river whose MSY levels were determined form river specific data that yielded an escapement goal of 10,000 and potential fishing impacts (nets. bonking, and hooking mortality) of 6,000. The impacts would be 6,000/16,000 or 37.5% of the run. (For this discussion I'm assuming that the state hired a couple of the steelhead experts on this site as management biologists so each year the escapement and impact goals are precisely achieved).

If we correct for the estimate errors the actual catch would be 20% higher - that is 7,200. The actual escapement would be 20% lower or 8,000. The fishing impacts would be 7,200/15,200 or 47.4%. While it looks like over fishing has occurred what it really means is that the MSY escapement goal was over estimated and the allowable impacts at MSY were underestimated.

Since the information from the Quillayute was a major component in the determination of escapement goals in most Western Washington rivers if your allegations are correct then maybe the State should consider adjusting what the MSY levels would be for those rivers -that is lowering them.

Bob - the roar you are hearing is the "bonkers of the world" applauding you for pointing out the errors of the State's approach. LOL!

Tight lines
Smalma

And the silence now is the closure / collapse of another one of Washngton's steelhead streams ... no clinking of oarlocks, or singing reels, nor even the splash of a fish's tail soaking the angler as he sends his quarry back into the river.

But you're right Smalma, we give. The WDFW knows all and has done a perfect job with the fisheries in this state.

I'm only thankful that we have have the ultimate harvest-based fisheries manager here on the coast ... it's the very reason I'm back home right now ... it's called incessant rain!