Ah, pardon me but I'm not the smokin' type... But I'll pass you a bait that will catch a fish though...

Keith

I couldn't agree more with this statement...pristine habitat, no overharvest, and good ocean conditions will result in excellent abundance...pristine habitat and no overharvest during periods of poor ocean conditions will preserve the functionality of the population while it waits for the ocean conditions to turn around...in the case of steelhead, the population may even spend more of its productivity creating resident rainbows to avoid the ocean altogether. When the ocean changes for the better, they then contribute to the now more advantageous anadromous life form.

Kill off the buffer of resident rainbows and good river habitat, and there won't be enough left to take advantage of good ocean conditions when they do return.

Fish populations going through magnitude ten natural cycles boom and bust has always been part of the natural environmental conditions...but kicking 'em when they're down during the bust part of the cycle might end any chance of having that boom when things turn around...

Fish on...

Todd

P.S. When I hear of the predator problems on the Columbia River system...terns, cormorants, mergansers, bass, walleye, sea lions, whatever...I call that a "habitat" problem...there wouldn't be a bunch of warmwater fish eating salmon fry if there weren't dams there creating the habitat for the predator fish to flourish in. There wouldn't be a bottleneck of sea lions at Bonneville if there wasn't a bottleneck created there to pin the fish up against, and there wouldn't be a tern problem if we didn't dredge the channel out and make artificial islands for them to nest on.

The cormorant and merganser problem can also be equated with a hatchery problem...wild fish emerge and migrate at all different times and places, but clouds of hatchery fish coming down six inches under the surface every time they release a few million at once attracts those birds in a way that they never would have been attracted before.

Those predator problems are not being addressed properly, in my opinion...getting rid of the predators is getting rid of the symptom...the actual problem is what created an environment friendly to those predators.

Can you build a cabinet out of Salmon?

You bet I can. And it will hold up the glass of koolaid freespool is drinking

Freespool,

You are a classic example of one issue myopia.

Guess I am too Ryan. The smoking gun in the dwindling wild steelhead populations are piss poor hatchery practices.
I'm not downplaying the role of habitat and in fact it plays a huge role along with ocean conditions and the like.
The point is every expert agrees that hatcheries have been a huge detriment to wild salmonids region wide.

Here is an interesting article from Oregon Sate University you guys may find worth reading.

Science Daily

There is also the Araki paper on the Genetic Effects of Captive Breeding Cause a Rapid, Cumupative Fitness Decline in the Wild for those who want to research it further.

Freespool, a mental midget serving some serious cool aide. Lund works hard for a living building cabinets and you diss? You a lawyer/ politician like ripley the snake oil salesman? Keith, maybe you should hit it up so you can chill and get off the purse seine debate. See ya all later, the baker-

All I know is I out fish you all, with the exception of lund, who which by the way is growing on me a bit. The topic WAS about victory on the umpqua, why don't we start a special new thread called " todd, freespool and keith know best and know it all" then you guys could spend all day strokin eachother

The baker........... hmm........

Keith

i`d turn the river over to the cca

Whoa, didn't know you'd go there... Hmmm. Ok......

Keith

All good points! This should be a no brainer.

not me, you told me i was a gillnetter

salmon bake, why is it you try to prove on each and every thread you type on that your a fuckin idiot?

We get it...no need to prove it to us anymore.

Fish on...

Todd

I don't agree!
The programs have been going for more than the 4 years Lund claims. With the practice of main stem and spread out smolt releases coupled with the loss of wild spawners due to this program then what else can it be?
Certainly ocean conditions played a big part but if you look at the redd surveys (that ODFW can never seem to provide) then the drop off after that first broodstock adult return is alarming.

sorry Stew, you're right I definitely can't say that with any certainty. What I should've said is that steelhead returns were down coastwide last winter even in places without broodstock programs. Not sure how spawner abundance on the Wilson and Nestucca compared to other non-supplemented systems. I definitely DO NOT support broodstock hatcheries in any way.

I personally don't care about eating another hatchery steelhead so in my own perfect world I'd just rather catch beautiful wild steelhead. That said however nobody has addressed the success of the broodstock program on the Vedder. The wild stock is considered very healthy although they have had this in place since the 80's. I spoke with Fred Helmer about it recently and him as well as other locals consider it a success. I posted about this earlier in the thread but no one has responded. I don't make that drive for hatchery fish. Trust me some of the greatest number days I have ever encountered were from that river.

I know you are one of the good guys and I appreciate everything you've done in the name of wild fish.
We've noted a drop off the last several years with last year being the worst.
The redds we counted or I should say didn't count were depressing. Meanwhile ODFW just plows ahead with this stupid ass program.
If you are ever down here in late May or June when ODFW releases their over sized broodstock smolt then bring your three weight

Here's something about the broodstock program on the Vedder, for what it's worth...

They take a specified number of fish, and assume that the recruits are spawning in the river and creating more "wild" fish...yet they have absolutely nothing to back that up except for the guides' opinions that "it works great"...

There's no counting, no studying, and no measurement of effectiveness of the program...just taking out wild fish, making hatchery fish, and sending them off...and then assuming they are spawning and making more "wild" fish.

I'm not saying it's not having some sort of effect, good or bad...what I'm saying is that I am lacking the same information to make an actual informed decision on that as those who trumpet it as a great thing, though they don't seem to mind the lack of information when forming their opinions.

If it is indeed creating more "wild" fish than would be there without it...well, it's the only one so far.

Not impossible I guess, but not bloody likely.

Anyone tries to stick a wild fish I catch into a tube better be prepared to have themselves stuffed in the tube and see how they fare.

Fish on...

Todd