Hello JR,

I am not sure that I understand the reasons for your opposition to trying to
restore disappearing natural runs with hatchery fish. These days, I
understand that hatchery stock, in order to maintain the purity of the gene
pool for a given river, is produced using eggs and milt from wild fish
returning to that river . From what I hear, hatchery fish do have a higher
early mortality than stream bred fish because despite having the same genes,
they will be less well adapted to wild conditions initially. However, if
they do manage to survive say, a year, it seems to me that they should be
the same in every way as stream-bred fish of the same age. Am I missing
something here? Sure, I too would like to see steelhead runs restored by
returning the environment to what it was a couple of centuries ago but let's
face it, that's not going to happen.



Best regards,



Yuji Sakuma



================================================== ===

"JR" wrote in message ...