Weirs are a pain.

First I think it's more prudent to follow up on Stlhdr1's suggestion and verify how many wild fish there are, as differentiated from unmarked hatchery fish, and then attempt to determine whether any wild fish are actually being harmed by hatchery fish on natural spawning grounds. Might be able to avoid building a lot of weirs, depending on the outcome of that investigation. Don't get me wrong, I think separating hatchery and wild fish is worthwhile. I just want to make sure that an action taken actually contributes to its intended result.

Being someone who currently operates a weir, I can verify how much of a pain they are.

Regardless if weirs are a pain or not, the NOAA draft EIS for guiding Columbia Basin hatcheries has weirs included in alternative 3,4 ,and 5 so a possibility exists to install them if one of those alts. are picked.
http://www.nwr.noaa.gov/Salmon-Harvest-Hatcheries/Hatcheries/MA-EIS.cfm

Many along with the tribes aren’t too happy with the DEIS so should be interesting to see what happens.
Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission member tribes have weighed in at every public meeting, and plan to submit detailed comments and technical analysis by the Dec. 3 deadline. The Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Spring and Yakama tribes fish commercially and for ceremonial and subsistence purposes based on long-held treaty rights and other agreements.

“In reviewing the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the tribes find it disturbing that the analysis of alternatives does not adequately reflect regional collaborative agreements, such as the 2009-2017 U.S. v. Oregon Management Agreement,”
Bruce Jim said during the meeting in Astoria. Jim is chairman of the Fish and Wildlife Committee of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon.

Nice to see the tribes leading the fight as always, but somehow I feel the cuts if they do come will be in the lower river hatcherys.

SBD,

Yeah, because we need these viable tule populations in habitat that very probably won't support naturally self-sustaining chinook. I hope I'm just being over cynical with that, but have these fish ecologists noticed that there isn't a tree left in the Grays River watershed? Yet a viable chinook population is a near-term goal?

Sg

I drove around Youngs Bay today, dikes run clear around the south side blocking at least half the habitat but supporting a herd of about 10 cows.

Just curious Matt what are the issues with the weirs, don't know much about them so alittle insight would be appreciated..

Matt, pain or not, are they selective?

I can only speak for the one I work on, but the main issue occurs with high water. When the flow increases enough, the force of the water along with various debris washing up can push the weir beneath the surface allowing fish to pass over it. Most of the time you can prevent this by ensuring debris doesn't pile up, but with enough flow there's nothing you can do. Perhaps this isn't an issue at sites where the velocity is never high, unfortunately we don't have this luxury on our system.

So of course they're selective, but in my experience they can become inoperable for weeks at a time.

Hey Thanks! On a average and operable day how many hatchery fish would you be able to sort?

I really can't say, we don't get enough fish back to our system to the point where we can't process them all. Also, the point of our trap isn't to sort hatchery and wild fish, but rather to collect data and apply tags. Sorry I can't be of more help.

Well I just learned about a 1000% more than I knew an hour ago..

this is a sad waste of money.

Thats what I would call it. But at least WDFW has stopped telling everyone that they could get alot more fish, 45% mark rate.

Doesn't take much to get numbers on wild vs. hatchery.....2 counters...1 for each.........seems that it would make collection of data that much more meaningful.

Have a good day!!!!!

I'd like to see the data that shows any CR stocks at 45% ad clip rate.
You keep harping about a high rate of unclipped fish, where's the proof?

freespool, I suspect SBD is basing it on the catch of the one beach seiner in the newspaper story: 12 unmarked fish out of 21 caught. Not a very large sample size to reach a conclusion, but if you need some data to support your conclusions, you can always find a little bit.

I have been working (volunteer) at a local native hatchery on the King run this year. The return to the hatchery was only a bit above what they needed to run full bore........I was told the mark rate here is 50%. I would say the majority of the fish were unmarked, so it appears some unmarked fish may be necessary to continue business as usual.........sportsmen got to fish for these same fish from the ocean all the way into the Seattle area.

A highly productive hatchery can support harvest rates of 90%. If the fisheries affecting this hatchery population are being managed for natural production, they can never generated harvest rates that high, so in most cases, unmarked fish that would be released in selective fisheries are not needed to support hatchery programs. In less productive hatcheries, or where you have small hatchery programs that export eggs to larger programs, like Skykomish coho (used to support the larger release program at Tulalip Bay as well as the smaller release in the Sky), releasing some unmarked fish may be necessary to assure that hatchery escapement is always made.