We did the Fisheries 101 crib sheet back in '99 or so. I have no idea how to dredge stuff up from the archives.

I will search for it and if successful, I'll repost it for the others. Thanks for the tip Salmo.

Never kill wild steelhead...simple.

Whats wrong with wanting the opportunity to go fishing?

I could care less if I ever killed a Steelhead. In the early 90's when the PS rivers went catch and release on wild fish my mentality changed. I found the C&R season on the wild fish was one of the more personally rewarding fisheries.

For me the reduction in hatchery fish eliminates the opportunity to go fishing.

I guess it's not too obvious to point out that returning those fish "live" without any eggs and sperm in them makes them approximately as effective as fish in a fish box at spawning...and with the current 5-8 percent repeat spawning rate (virtually all females), that means that what?

Less than one fish will return to spawn again, mathematically speaking?

Something like that. Maybe she'll get lucky the next go around and not be caught by someone who's going to shove her in a tube and make more hatchery fish with her eggs.

Fish on...

Todd

the early sexual maturity could explain the small cookie cutter steelhead that are so prevalent in hatchery dominated rivers. just a thought.

Wild steelhead do exactly the same thing. I have seen and handled a number of male steelhead that were in 15-18 cm range. I am pretty sure that some of them smolted after spawning, too.

I know no one wants to mention it...but what about the native americans. Are they going to be expected to stay off of the Skagit? If not this is all a big waste of time.

Too many nets strung across the river in places like Hamilton and Lyman and birdsview..dragged across entire river bars for the last of the native steelhead.

If that is not enough .....allowing them to harvest kings in the spring where downriver fish ie native steelhead get scooped up and tossed aside...for another endangered species.
Anyone care to speak on the natives take...just curious. Are they going to be expected to refrain from their kill em all methods? ..because nothing gets tossed back and if it does it is ....DEAD.

I have a ton of respect for Bill McMillan. He's a legendary steelheader and a devoted wild steelhead advocate, and I'd be honored to talk fish with him. That said, his opinions on what limits steelhead returns, informed and reasonable though they may be, are no more the last word than anyone else's.

There's a lot of talk about introgression, predation, and lot's of other things that get blamed on hatchery steelhead, and all of it's probably valid to some degree. If the argument is that hatchery steelhead don't help wild steelhead, I think it's clear that's the case. If the argument is that wild fish will make a marked recovery simply because hatchery fish are removed from the equation, what we have learned so far doesn't support that hypothesis.

Having had a little time to reason this all out, part of me has to appreciate two things about the outcome of the settlement:

1. Hatchery fish, while I maintain they are the only thing making steelhead fishing possible in the Puget Sound area, yield an extremely poor return on investment. From a strictly fiscal perspective, they have been a huge waste of money.

2. While there is a lot of evidence to suggest that hatchery fish are not a significant limiting factor in wild steelhead recovery, they seem to be a net detriment to that cause, and if that's true, removing them can only help.

I don't buy that hatchery steelhead "ringing the dinner bell" for predators is a legitimate argument. As Smalma will tell you, there are much larger numbers of other smolt species that share the same habitats, so the relatively small percentage of hatchery steelhead among them aren't likely to be a big contributor to that problem. If there are more predators consuming these fish than there were in the past, I would guess that's got a lot more to do with how we (humans) have over harvested those same species in the open ocean for over a century than hatchery smolt releases. Besides, if the hatchery smolt stop "ringing the bell," what shall we suppose will happen if larger numbers of wild smolts take their place? Seems like a no-win situation to me.

Whatever the outcome, we've got a change happening. All we can do now is hope it works for the better.

I would take anything Bill MCMillan claims with a large grain of salt.

Can't argue with ANY of that.

I can and have argue with virtual all of it!

However I will defer to "experts" here who have a much better grasp on these issues than I.

Curt

Smalma may have had limited time this morning, but here's a copy & paste of his posts on the topic in another forum:

Yes it is indeed the case that male steelhead have a more protracted spawning time than the females. That said the period that those males actually remain viable spawners is shorter than many think may be the case. In the Saltonstall-Kennedy Skagit steelhead study that we all discussed some time ago the radio tagged wild steelhead had vacated the spawning areas on the average within 28 days of spawning. It probably is the case when those fish left the spawning area they were no longer viable spawners. However in keeping in trying to assure that we err on the side of the wild steelhead I will assume that some males (a small portion of the total population) remain potential viable spawner for 6 weeks after the last female has spawned. In the case of Chambers Creek males that would mean the latest there would be a viable spawer would be mid-March. A timing such that there would only be a fractional of a percent chance of a hatchery fish spawning with a wild fish.

Just for fun let's look at the real world and see if that 6 week period is a reasonable assumption. As we know in North Puget Sound rivers wild winter steelhead spawn into July. Using mid-July as the date of the last female spawner we would expect to see viable male spawners through August. If the males were viable longer than that as some to think that would mean those viable males would still be in the river looking for mates after labor day. Wonder how many of you have caught such a fish in September (remember in rivers like the Skagit the wild fish are much more abundant than hatchery fish) so those late spawning should be much more common than late spawning hatchery males. I suspect like me that answer to the number of viable male wild spawners that you have encountered in late August or September is zero!

Why would we assume that hatchery fish would be viable for longer periods than the wild fish?

There is no reason that those few residuals that survive that first year in the river that some would become smolts and migrate to the salt and some others that survive until maturity return to the hatchery rather than spawning in the wild. However in these kinds of discussions the tendency is to ignore such behaviors because by assuming that those survivors spawned in the rivers is consistent to be erring on the side of the wild resource.

an we be absolutely sure that there are no interactions; of course not. The real question are those frequency in which those interactions like to be producing significant interactions? Or if you will it becomes a risk assessment game. I argue that the very limited nature of those inactions do not represent a significant risk and attempted to show why I feel that way.

Not sure how much hatchery active/history you are looking for. There has been hatchery steelhead activities in basin like the Skagit for more than a century. I can certainly summarize that history though I'm not sure how relevant that would be. The evolution of the steelhead hatchery program has been of constant adaption and evolution with the critical factor being what has happened in recent years and is expected in the immediate future.

Let's take a closer look at what having 25,000 non-migrating smolts might be. First let's remain for more than 60 years in the Chambers Creek steelhead program any fish that mature early or did not migrate and return form the salt have been severely selected against - they are not included in the brood stock. This is much different than integrated programs like that of Little Sheep Creek where wild fish are incorporated annually into the brood stock. That alone may explain why frequency of male mature smolts in such programs are higher than in programs like Chambers. By any out of 25,000 fish that did migrate I would expect at least 90% would be gone within months of release (on water observations seem to support that). That would mean that going into the winter there might be 2,500 of those fish still left. For wild fish over winter mortalities are in the 50% range. Going into that second summer we would be looking at 1,250 hatchery parr. For the wild steelhead population where best guess puts the average number of wild smolts something in the 100,000 to 150,000 per year or about 200,000 to 300,000 parr per year.

That means only a 0.5% of the steelhead parr would be of hatchery origin. Is that excessive? That is each of our calls though that estimate is mostly likely on the high side. On continue that math exercise to the end point of any survivors interacting with wild spawners but that becomes such a low number to essentially be meaningless (though to be fair there could be a fish or two). I agree with your assessment that such impacts are a drop in the bucket compared to other potential hatchery/wild interactions.

In the video the second major Chambers Creek impacts discussed was the attraction of an artificial number predators to the system. Since both WW and TallFlyGuy have also mentioned this issue let's take a closer look at this issue. Again I will focus on the Skagit and will talk in rough round numbers for this year's smolt out migrations in the basin. As we all know the current Chambers Creek smolt release target is 239,000.

Every spring in the Skagit between the wild steelhead, sea-run cutthroat, and bull trout smolts leaving the river is roughly the same as the hatchery release.

The number of sub-adult and adult sea-run cutthroat and bull trout leaving the system is roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of the hatchery steelhead release.

The number of hatchery Chinook and coho smolts leaving the system is 2 or 3 times of the numbers of hatchery steelhead releases.

The number of Baker sockeye smolts leaving the system is roughly 3 times the number of hatchery steelhead smolt #.

The number of wild coho leaving the system is typically 4 or 5 times the number of hatchery steelhead.

The number of wild Chinook migrants leaving the system is typically 8 to 10 times the number of hatchery steelhead.

The number of wild chum likely will be 4 times of the number of hatchery steelhead.

The number of wild pinks will be in the 40 to 80 times more numerous that hatchery steelhead.

In other words there will be pretty good numbers of salmonids (the majority of which are wild) migrating out the basin this spring.

In terms of attracting predators we probably should consider a couple of the other native species that can be fairly common in the basin. In the tidal section of the river there are surprising numbers of peamouth chubs and every year at this time there is a run of smelt spawning in the lower forks of the Skagit (some years the numbers of smelt are significant - most of which die after spawning and provide significant foraging opportunities). In addition there are quite few whitefish to be found through out the Skagit and Sauk.

Can any one say that whether the hatchery steelhead programs continues or not there would be significant difference in the forage base supporting potential predators?

Since yesterday I have been thinking a bit more about Cruik"s question of about whether we should expect mature residuals to return to the hatchery. While it is always dangerous when I start thinking about things and my thoughts often end up weirdly the more I thought about it the more I think he hit on a very important point. We know both anadromous and resident O. mykiss have demonstrated a strong tendency on reaching mature of returning to their "natal" home. We should expect maturing "residuals to do the same.

Any steelhead smolt residuals upon reaching maturity should be in that 14 to 18 size range or about the size of steelhead "jacks". Fortunately most of the hatcheries have both the ability to trap and keep track of the numbers of "jacks" returning (and captured) at various hatchery facilities. While the number of "jacks" returning to a steelhead hatchery would likely include true "jacks" and residuals the raw counts should provide us with the opportunity to look at the magnitude of the numbers of residuals surviving to maturity. Based on comments seen this and other discussions the range of residuals potentially reaching maturity ranges from 1,000s to 100s or if they survive at the rate of their anadromous siblings maybe dozens with the hatchery rack counts providing us insights into where in that range where the numbers might actually fall.

To explore those numbers I visited WDFW's hatchery escapement reports for the last 5 years at looked at the total adult returns as well as the "jack" numbers for both the Skagit and Snohomish systems (by far the two largest Chambers Creek programs in Puget Sound). What I found is that over the last 5 years 1,096 adults and zero "jacks" where trapped on the Skagit and 5,064 adults and 1 "jack" was trapped on the Snohomish system. I will leave it to the reader to decide what sort of survival to maturity rates those residuals are experiencing.

I have attempted to limit my comments in this thread to the issues raised in the McMillian Chambers Creek video. He specifically mentioned the potential hatchery/wild interactions off smolts that were sexually mature as smolts, residuals surviving to maturity, and the numbers of hatchery steelhead smolts attracting predators and used the Skagit as an example.

I think I have demonstrated:

1) With a early/mid-May release of the smolts any sexually mature smolt would be approximately 4 months past reaching maturity and are no longer viable spawner for the current spawning season.

2) Because of the general lack of fitness of the hatchery fish and the extreme hydrograph of the Skagit the long term survival of any residuals is very low approaching zero.

3) On the Skagit the total numbers of [potential prey in the spring on the Skagit dwarfs the contribution by hatchery steelhead. It is doubtful that those hatchery steelhead are attracting significant numbers of additional predators.
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I'm acquainted with Bill McMillan and have much appreciation for his passion for and depth of knowledge about steelhead. That knowledge doesn't make him right about everything, and in that video he makes several gross over-generalizations relative to the effects of Chambers Creek hatchery fish on wild steelhead.

Sg

very nice read Smalma...


at the risk of sounding uninformed (which i am in this case), how are smolts sexually mature? isnt that like a baby being sexually mature? how is it possible for a 3 inch smolt to spawn with say a 10 pound fish?

or is there something im missing in that statement that was made earlier?

Wow.

That was by far the most informative post on this topic to date.

Thank you

When biologists who have worked extensively with fisheries and specifically experience with Puget Sound steelhead, tell you hatchery fish are not the problem some people want them to be, maybe we should listen?

Evo,

Just as a salmon or steelhead "jack" is a sexually precosscious male, there are environmental and physiological conditions that combine to mature rainbow/steelhead males at less than two years of age. It's not like a baby being sexually mature because a two-year old trout is not a baby. They stop being "baby" fish by at least two months of age. And a smolt sized steelhead is not 3", more like 6 to 8". There are lots of resident rainbow and cutthroat trout that are sexually mature and spawn at around 6" in length. And precoscious rainbows and steelhead have been directly observed spawning with normal sized adult female steelhead numerous times. They have to be fast and sneaky since there is usually one or more typical size sexually mature males around spawning females.

Sg

I haven't watched the McMillan video yet, but I appreciate the comments here on it.

No one can argue that hatchery fish are good for wild fish...and really no one can argue that they are not bad for them, too.

That being said...the level of "bad" things from using Chambers Creek stock is so low as to be negligible.

Considering we are being asked to give up all steelhead fishing in Puget Sound for negligible benefits...I think that doing so would be asinine.

The one area where I would have some concern is that there should be, and were November, December, and January native steelhead in good numbers in the past, and there's no doubt that Chambers Creek hatchery fish contributed mightily to their demise, whether it be thru mixed-stock harvest, displacement on the spawning grounds, wild/hatchery smolt competition for food and space...whatever.

Can we get those fish back? Will getting rid of Chambers Creek fish contribute in any meaningful way to that happening?

I'd have said "yes" if we were still releasing many millions, with a large percentage those being outplanted so that they were not collected at the hatcheries.

I'd have also said "yes" if they were not clipped. Back in the day when the hatchery programs were really ramping up and the hatchery fish weren't clipped we just harvested whatever we caught...I mean, with the full tilt hatchery programs putting out fish that were exactly the same as the wild fish it didn't really matter, right?

Well, it's become clear we were catastrophically mistaken about that, and that while we were harvesting whatever swam by a goodly portion of them were the earlier returning wild fish, too.

With fin clipping, and adult collection facilities, though, it's hard to argue that those effects would still be significantly affecting early timed wild fish...I think.

I'd love to hear Salmo g. and Smalma chime in on that.

Fish on...

Todd

Removing the Chambers creek fish is not going to save or enhance these wild runs of steelhead. If we do nothing about the habitat, they will continue to decrease in most of the cases. Possibly the Skagit could be an exception as I have learned from others as it is a fairly healthy run already and it is already trending upward.

We are spending billions on habitat restoration. But only 150 million a year in PS and Hood Canal. That is not even close to enough to fix the problems. All it does is allow people to say we are doing something. When you drive over a construction area where they are replacing a culvert with a bridge, that project can cost from 5-10 million all by itself. Links available on request. Tell me the name and I will help you find it.

We know where the money comes from and every year there are budget fights to reduce spending. Fish and wildlife are actually sort of low on the list of priorities.

Do the math, if fisherman are no longer fishing, they don't write letters to their senators and congressman. So if they don't feel any pressure from their constituents, they have no reason not to trade away cuts to fisheries in exchange for something they hear from their constituents about every day.

How many times have you heard about cuts to NOAA's budget? That is where the bulk of the money for habitat comes from with the exception of the Columbia Basin which is mostly BPA money. (our power rates).

We have been putting together watershed recovery and management plans.
The ESA requires that we come up with a plan to restore these fish. And the plans encompass what it will take to restore the habitat so we will have even the slightest chance of restoring naturally spawning fish and also what it will take to ensure water for in stream flows, irrigation, and people.

Washington has 62 defined watersheds, Oregon has 74. The Yakima Basin Plan covers the upper Yakima and Cle Elum basin, the lower Yakima and the Naches basin which runs to the east side of Chinook Pass.

This plan alone is estimated to cost 4 billion over the next 30 years. The expectation is 300,000 to 900,000 salmon and steelhead based on historical records. It is us taxpayers who will pay for that. Not license sales, not use permits.

So multiply that by the number of watershed plans being drawn up. The ESA requires us to restore these fish. But we can still delay and fight. And when they ask for more rate increases and property tax increases to implement these plans, its going to be a tough sell. And an even tougher sell if these are fish we don't get to fish for.

So we could easily limp along for another 30 years, with a woefully under funded budget. And 150 million in PS will not accomplish much of anything.
The very last thing we need is to divide fisherman and stakeholders. And if the general public see's us fighting amongst ourselves, they will just shut us off. "I ain't voting for that" "those people are just living in a dream world".

" We need money for transportation and parks and recreation for everybody". "FIsherman are just a small and weak special interest group"

Todd,

Your post captures several of the salient reasons why the potential effects of hatchery steelhead have been reduced even more than they were before. The early timed wild winter runs were significant in number, but they still were the smaller fraction of the population. And those early fish were divided between the early timed spawners and the normal (late) timed spawners.

It's my estimation that in most PS basins, and especially the Skagit, that the early timed spawners were still the smaller fraction. I base that on the headwater elevation of the various tributaries, including the lowermost tributaries in the basin. Elevation influences water temperature, which influences spawn timing. Even the lowest Skagit tributaries head in places like Cultis Mountain, which is over 3,000', and that's typical of the "foothills" in the Skagit basin.

I mention this because I don't think the early timed wild fish were reduced in abundance through introgression or displacement as much as by the more obvious mixed stock harvest. It's also consistent with my old fish data, where harvest really ramped up in the 1960s in response to hatchery development at Barnaby Slough and improved road and boat access and increased leisure time (OK, and spinning reels). By the time the Boldt Decision rolled around, early timed wild fish were already an exception, rather than the rule.

Recovering early timed wild fish would be possible only with selective harvest, and that, we know, is likely to be a problem because of tribal insistence on gillnetting. I should also mention that another constraint on recovering early timed steelhead is habitat. The lowland tributaries that once hosted them are among the most trashed and will remain so for logical development-related reasons. They could still produce some steelhead because they are producing significant numbers of coho and cutthroat.

Sg