Sol Duc wild steelhead management zone established

[Dhoey07]

This is a bad idea!       Now you can only keep 1 steele on the duc per year and the overall numbers will drop by a lot. Sounds like a push from our left wing folks in tree huging Olympia.

Or it sounds like a push from Bios to restore the natural Steelhead runs to the river.  Why dont you stop and use that brain of yours for a minute and do some research as to why they are doing this, and stop thinking with your greed.  Hatchery fish are terrible for the population as a whole.  They are weak inbred fish that are "watering" down the wild population slowly but surely.  Eventually all the wild Steelhead will contain the weak hatchery gene and the population will slowly disappear to nothing.  Hatchery fish have a much lower survival rate in the wild.  Hatchery fish are destroying genetically unique Steelhead populations.  Hatchery fish are competing with wild fish for redd locations.  In order to sustain Steelhead fisheries in the future, we need to evaluate what waters contain large runs of wild fish and save them from the hatchery plague.  You both sound like the stereotypical gear throwers all the fly fishers like to bash because of your selfish me first, fish later attitude.

Yes the numbers will drop, and yes you will only be able to catch one.  As the wild population rebounds due to better management practices there will be more fish, and eventually a better fishery for yours and mine kids.  Steelhead research has made huge strides in the past decade and old management practices are being revised or eliminated in order to properly manage the fish.  The hatcheries are one of these old management practices that does more harm than good in the long run.  Stop thinking about the short term, and think about the long term.  If you do not, there wont be ANY Steelhead for you, nor your children to catch in the future.

And agreed on the point about the dammed rivers.  I have a feeling they will not implement this management practice on rivers with dams, at least without further research.  The dams are one of the some of the most important pieces of infrastructure in the PNW, yet at the same time they are the number one killer of Salmon and Steelhead.  Can you imagine catching wild Chinook and Steelhead on the Sanpoil?  You were able to until Grand Coulee was built.  For 4 years after the construction anadromous fish continued to return to the dam site to try and migrate up river, until that 4th year when none were recorded.  That dam wiped out countless individual populations of anadromous fish.  In order to understand the significance of this you have to have an understanding of how anadromous fish populations work.  Each creek has its own population with its own genes.  Transplanting fish from one creek to another generally has a very low success rate.  In the wild, anadromous fish use their homing senses (still debating as to what senses are used, but it is generally accepted smell is one) to find their home creek.  Every year fish will stray from their home creek to another.  This promotes finding new habitat to breed in as well as preventing genetic inbreeding among populations.  These are FRAGILE ecosystems with creek specific populations, many of which we have forced into extinction.

Kudos to the state for finally making a sound Steelhead management move.

Do you understand what the snider creek program was all about?

Uhh supplementation of the Steelhead population via artificial rearing of native and non native strains of Steelhead.  It's what nearly every hatchery program is about, tailored to the water the hatchery is on.

Just for reading, nearly all of my points are met in this review of the hatchery,
http://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/01187/wdfw01187.pdf

Points such as:

Hatchery fishing bringing negative genetic and domestication traits into the wild strain.

Hatchery fishing negatively effecting spawning of wild fish.

Removal of wild broodstock fish reducing fish spawned in the wild, etc.

I'm glad you can use google.

Snider creek is unlike all other hatcheries because they use Native fish for broodstock, not returning hatchery fish.  The resulting smolt are reared until smolt and then released.  Those fish won't dillute the gene pool if they spawn with true wild fish.   

[teal101]

This is a bad idea!       Now you can only keep 1 steele on the duc per year and the overall numbers will drop by a lot. Sounds like a push from our left wing folks in tree huging Olympia.

Or it sounds like a push from Bios to restore the natural Steelhead runs to the river.  Why dont you stop and use that brain of yours for a minute and do some research as to why they are doing this, and stop thinking with your greed.  Hatchery fish are terrible for the population as a whole.  They are weak inbred fish that are "watering" down the wild population slowly but surely.  Eventually all the wild Steelhead will contain the weak hatchery gene and the population will slowly disappear to nothing.  Hatchery fish have a much lower survival rate in the wild.  Hatchery fish are destroying genetically unique Steelhead populations.  Hatchery fish are competing with wild fish for redd locations.  In order to sustain Steelhead fisheries in the future, we need to evaluate what waters contain large runs of wild fish and save them from the hatchery plague.  You both sound like the stereotypical gear throwers all the fly fishers like to bash because of your selfish me first, fish later attitude.

Yes the numbers will drop, and yes you will only be able to catch one.  As the wild population rebounds due to better management practices there will be more fish, and eventually a better fishery for yours and mine kids.  Steelhead research has made huge strides in the past decade and old management practices are being revised or eliminated in order to properly manage the fish.  The hatcheries are one of these old management practices that does more harm than good in the long run.  Stop thinking about the short term, and think about the long term.  If you do not, there wont be ANY Steelhead for you, nor your children to catch in the future.

And agreed on the point about the dammed rivers.  I have a feeling they will not implement this management practice on rivers with dams, at least without further research.  The dams are one of the some of the most important pieces of infrastructure in the PNW, yet at the same time they are the number one killer of Salmon and Steelhead.  Can you imagine catching wild Chinook and Steelhead on the Sanpoil?  You were able to until Grand Coulee was built.  For 4 years after the construction anadromous fish continued to return to the dam site to try and migrate up river, until that 4th year when none were recorded.  That dam wiped out countless individual populations of anadromous fish.  In order to understand the significance of this you have to have an understanding of how anadromous fish populations work.  Each creek has its own population with its own genes.  Transplanting fish from one creek to another generally has a very low success rate.  In the wild, anadromous fish use their homing senses (still debating as to what senses are used, but it is generally accepted smell is one) to find their home creek.  Every year fish will stray from their home creek to another.  This promotes finding new habitat to breed in as well as preventing genetic inbreeding among populations.  These are FRAGILE ecosystems with creek specific populations, many of which we have forced into extinction.

Kudos to the state for finally making a sound Steelhead management move.

Do you understand what the snider creek program was all about?

Uhh supplementation of the Steelhead population via artificial rearing of native and non native strains of Steelhead.  It's what nearly every hatchery program is about, tailored to the water the hatchery is on.

Just for reading, nearly all of my points are met in this review of the hatchery,
http://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/01187/wdfw01187.pdf

Points such as:

Hatchery fishing bringing negative genetic and domestication traits into the wild strain.

Hatchery fishing negatively effecting spawning of wild fish.

Removal of wild broodstock fish reducing fish spawned in the wild, etc.

I'm glad you can use google.

Snider creek is unlike all other hatcheries because they use Native fish for broodstock, not returning hatchery fish.  The resulting smolt are reared until smolt and then released.  Those fish won't dillute the gene pool if they spawn with true wild fish.

I'm glad you can generalize and assume, disregarding source material.

Snider creek is not alone, other hatcheries have done this (Hood River), and do do this.  These fish still dilute the gene pool as they pick up domesticating traits while being reared.  It is proven.  Also, wild fish spawning with hatchery fish produce fewer adult off spring than wild on wild, roughly 85% of wild on wild.

Not only that, but the hatchery fish are not growing to appropriate size before release, resulting in a later spawning return, two years as opposed to one.  They are changing the ecosystem.

[teal101]

I honestly believe gillnetting is a small part of why these fish aren't coming back. (Flame away) not saying I agree with the practice but I don't think its the majority of the problem, but it sure is easy to point the finger.

Look at some of the rivers that have massive hatchery plants and relatively low netting. A lot of these systems are having trouble getting wild fish and hatchery fish back. Here's why imo. 1: If you continue to inbreed fish they will become less and less genetically diverse which will lead to poor survival rates. When genetically inferior fish spawn with wild fish it makes the survival rate of the now "wild fish" lower.  2: urban expansion continues to take away habitat put silt and chemical runoff into the river destroying the chances of the vulnerable smolts survival and valuable spawning areas. Dams are another issue which we all know about.

Now let's look at some of the coastal rivers that get the shi+ netted out of them. Comparatively the habitat is left pretty much unchanged. These rivers still get great runs of wild fish, which leads me to believe that netting is not the single greatest cause of the wild steelheads demise. Rather habitat destruction is.

Removing hatcherys from rivers is not the end all be all cure but it is a great strp in the right direction for the recovery of these northwest icons.

We have the gentics to rival the fisheries of b.c. And with the right managment plans I believe the oly pen could once again be the motherland to steelheaders. But there are several pieces to this puzzle. Decreasing Netting, removing hatcherys,  and restoring habitat are just a few places to start in restoring these fish we all cherish.

I hope my future children will be able to enjoy these great fish as I have.

Wa needs to take a look at B.C.'s managment plan and start there.

The Wenatchee River is a prime example.

[asl20bball]

teal101: guess it comes down to this: You prefer a strong native population. I, and many others, prefer a strong Steelhead population.

[teal101]

teal101: guess it comes down to this: You prefer a strong native population. I, and many others, prefer a strong Steelhead population.

Agreed.  I'd prefer to see the fish brought back to a natural state with little to no artificial influence.  Like I said before, this is near impossible on rivers with dams, but on natural flow rivers I see no reason for artificial supplementation.  Management practices need to be reviewed to help those rivers.  I think this is too often misinterpreted as anti fishing by the lefties, when in fact it is not anti anything.  It is PRO wild native fish, and unfortunately that means possibly losing access to a fishery.  I'd rather have the fish for future generations to look at then decimate and extinct them due to selfish reasons.

[PolarBear]

Taking the whole net thing out of the equation.   The problem with many hatchery runs is that they start off fine and even grow in numbers but eventually more and more fish that make it back to the hatchery for reproduction are the fish who after many years have had the aggressiveness bred out of them.  These fish are making it back to reproduce because they do not bite.  Many of the fish that we want in the system are aggressive enough to bite and are taken out by sportsmen.  After many years you have a run of fish that are nothing but fodder for the gill nets and leave very few biters for us fishermen.  These brats also do not feed well once out to sea.  Net pens are just as bad.  The coho that the Squaxin tribe raises in net pens and releases into the Sound are not caught by sportsmen but almost exclusively by tribal nets because of their poor feeding habits.  These fish tend to be much smaller than natives as well.   

[Button Nubbs]

another good point!

[Dhoey07]

A couple points

Native steelhead spend 1-4 years in freshwater, a small portion of snider fish stay 1 year in freshwater after getting released.  So yes a small portion of snider smolts compete for food in freshwater with wild smolts.

Snider fish are caught, tethered, and transported to the Sol Duc hatchery, so there are spawning "biters"

Snider creek fish spawn 1-2 months earlier than wild fish so the chances of crossing a first gen hatchery and a wild fish are small. 

The snider creek program releases 100k smolts while only needing 45 adults.  That's a lot of return considering.

[Button Nubbs]

So what kind of fish is it considered if eggs are incubated at the salmon hatchery? How about if they're held in rearing ponds?

Incubation and rearing facilities can and will spread disease.

I'm assuming they feed the fish the same things as they do other hatcheries in the state...

Hmmm... Sounds like a hatchery fish to me.

Oh and 100K is a lot of smolt. Assuming 10 % stay in freshwater like you say that's still 10,000 fish.

[JimmyHoffa]

When considering nets for  those certain rivers, must also consider amount of time the nets aren't in the river.  They cycle them in and out depending on days of the week and for the coastal rivers will net fewer and fewer days as the year moves along in the wild fish return cycle.  For Sol Duc I usually see about 2-3 nets strung across the mouth by the boat ramp AND another 4 nets behind the Mora campground on the Quileute.  The fish just have to pick a lucky day to swim up that river.
 

[GEARHEAD]

All i know is this. they killed off many of the high lakes, because the fish in them are not native. they believe having no fish in a system, be it a river or a lake, is better than having anything classified as non native. this is just a growing trend.

[teal101]

A couple points

Native steelhead spend 1-4 years in freshwater, a small portion of snider fish stay 1 year in freshwater after getting released.  So yes a small portion of snider smolts compete for food in freshwater with wild smolts.

A small portion stay 2 years.  They want them to only spend one year as to have as little impact as possible on the native smolts.

Snider fish are caught, tethered, and transported to the Sol Duc hatchery, so there are spawning "biters"

Cant argue that!

Snider creek fish spawn 1-2 months earlier than wild fish so the chances of crossing a first gen hatchery and a wild fish are small. 

Somewhat true.  Within 5 weeks of the statistical beginning of the run, 85% of the hatchery and 25% of the native fish have entered the system.

The snider creek program releases 100k smolts while only needing 45 adults.  That's a lot of return considering.

It is intended to provide a maximum of 100,000 smolts.  The targeted release in turn was lowered to 50,000 before 1998.

 

[teal101]

All i know is this. they killed off many of the high lakes, because the fish in them are not native. they believe having no fish in a system, be it a river or a lake, is better than having anything classified as non native. this is just a growing trend.

Many of those lakes were over populated with stunted fish.  There was a knee jerk reaction by the state on that issue due to a few studies on non native fish effects on native amphibians.  When the bulk of the high lakes were being planted, the state did not understand the effect of planting so many fish in such small waters.  There are plans to kill off more lakes and re-introduce fish in smaller densities to allow all specie to interact.  Some systems they are shooting for all native (Sol Duc), some an equilibrium between the two(Columbia River and Tribs as well as most lakes in the state), and others all artificial(Stan Coffin Lake managed as 100% non native warmwater).

[Dhoey07]

So what kind of fish is it considered if eggs are incubated at the salmon hatchery? How about if they're held in rearing ponds?

Incubation and rearing facilities can and will spread disease.

I'm assuming they feed the fish the same things as they do other hatcheries in the state...

Hmmm... Sounds like a hatchery fish to me.

Oh and 100K is a lot of smolt. Assuming 10 % stay in freshwater like you say that's still 10,000 fish.

If these snider creek smolts have such an effect on wild smolts, why have wild escapement numbers gone up since it's inception?

[teal101]

So what kind of fish is it considered if eggs are incubated at the salmon hatchery? How about if they're held in rearing ponds?

Incubation and rearing facilities can and will spread disease.

I'm assuming they feed the fish the same things as they do other hatcheries in the state...

Hmmm... Sounds like a hatchery fish to me.

Oh and 100K is a lot of smolt. Assuming 10 % stay in freshwater like you say that's still 10,000 fish.

If these snider creek smolts have such an effect on wild smolts, why have wild escapement numbers gone up since it's inception?

They havent.  It's fluctuated quite a bit, but returns between 1991-2010 have shown no significant stable increase in wild fish escapement.  I'm interested as to where you got this figure.