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