TR: Monster Steelhead

"Yuji Sakuma" wrote:
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.


Yuji,

JR is right on the money here, but you are too. The problem os that
only some of the hatcheries actually take wild fish for their brood
stock. Most of the rivers have two distinct runs of fish, the early
run is the hatchery fish, they are smaller, and the descendants of
hatchery fish first introduced from other rivers many years ago. The
later run natives are the vestige if the original stock and need to be
protected.

In a few instances hatcheries have converted to supporting the native
fishery, and in most of those cases they don't mark the smolts before
releasing them so we see them as natives when they return.

Thanks for asking some good questions,

Chas
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