Steelhead Confusion

[letsfish]

I have fished for steelies for a while, yet still am confused when I hear they are putting the steelhead in the lakes.Why?If returned to the rivers won't they return to the hatchery again?Of course they will,so why take a "proven product" out of the loop?? To change the genetic make up? That doesn't figure either.
So what is the story on the steelhead we hear about released to the stillwaters of the state??

[4u2fish]

I know that they do this in Man lake just outside of Hebo and I have always thought that it was overflow fish. That is to say that they have a surplus of fish and they put them into the lakes.. this explanation is probably trumped up but ignorance is bliss so I have always been fine with it. Anyone know the "REEL TRUTH" or is the theroy I have been cling to all these years correct??

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AKC H2O-K9

[Mikie]

Take away your river? Think about it I think there has got to be a better way. There is live spawn , that way those steelhead can do what they do best. Even if they don't make it back for another round, they still end up feeding fry when they leave the redds , one way or another putting a steelhead in a land locked lake just does'nt seem right to me. http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif MIKIE

[Salmonslayer2]

I have been told this. The reason why they put steelhead in lakes is be cause the state wants to keep the ratio the same between Hatchery and wild. There is no hatchery fish returned to the rivers. This is wrong. Steelhead that is released into lakes is very cruel to the fish. I have seen these fish suffer and that’s a shame. This practice needs to be stopped.

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[letsfish]

Seems a waste of money...take a fish after returning and dump it in the lake.If it could return again it would pay for itself again,no rearing of smolt needed,no trucking to some lake.No man hours, just a fish that would return and either delight an angler http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif or be available for spawning material(eggs or sperm).
Currently, it's kind of like raising a cow,watching her calve and then milk her once and sell her for hamburger.
I would like to read a good explaination of this "surplus" principle.
Anybody feel up to it.

[_LIPPEE]

Salmonslayer2
How do you figure that it's cruel, The fish are going to die some day anyway, by way of knocked in the head. gillnet's, seal's, snagger's, and a number of different way's.
If the hatcheries fill there quota then what's the problem. Lippee

[smilesforu]

They do this in some of our local lakes and it makes for some fun fishing for people who wouldn't normally get the chance at them (kids usually). The fish that they do this with are the surplus fish that the hatchery doesn't need. So instead of having them spawn in the stream depleting the native strain they provide more fishing opportunities.
Tight Lines

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Marty M
Steelheader.net (http://www.steelheader.net/)

[Jellyhead]

Here's my only complaint---It makes steelhead available to people who don't buy a steelhead tag! I'd rather have the things die in stream and contribute to the river system than put in some lake. Or better yet, knock em' in the head, freeze em', and use them in the carcass programs.

Just my .02

Aaron

[Hoosier Daddy]

Those fish are surplus fish from hatcheries, meaning the hatchery doesn't have the room to rear the eggs from those fish anyway, and have already met their needs for spawners, (or they estimate they will). So moving those fish to a lake does a couple of things, One: it removes them from the river, where they shouldn't be allowed to spawn (not necessarily opinion, just a NMFS fact), Two: it provides opportunities for fishing to people who don't necessarily have the skill or ability to catch them from a river. This is real similar to the recycling of steelhead back down rivers, except this way, they don't have to worry about catching them again before they hit the spawning beds.

[SureSet]

I've got to agree with Marty and Chinookie. If you've ever seen some of the 8-10 year old kids (and for that matter, some adults who don't fish much) latch into a 8-10# fish on a spinner and a trout rod, you'd love it. I have to believe that those instances do more to recruit new fisherman than just about anything I can imagine. Take a day and go down to Junction City, EE Wilson, etc. It's worth the entertainment, and if you have kids old enough, it's an easy outing.

SureSet

[Hoosier Daddy]

Just got an email from someone about this post (least I think its this one). Jim, if you are out there, here goes. I can't claim to know all the details of why decisions like this are made (recycling fish), so I'm not trying to say "No, this is how it really is", although I realize it may sound that way. So, for the record, I have no more insight into this stuff than any one else, I was only trying to point out some POSSIBLE explanations. The only people who could give you definitive answers would be the biologists, etc. that are doing the work.

What I do know is that the NMFS is very involved in anadromous fisheries issues in the NW due to endangered/threatened species issues. While they may not be directly responsible for decisions such as this one, meaning they didn't tell ODFW to do it (don't know if they did or didn't), they likely DID have an indirect impact. This is because a lot of fisheries decisions being made nowadays are made with an eye towards what NMFS's response will be. So while NMFS may not tell ODFW what to do, they DO influence a lot of decisions.

In addition, as far as just letting those fish go to spawn, besides interaction with wild fish, keep in mind that not all the rivers we have that get hatchery runs actually have a hatchery on them. Often, fish are/were planted from nearby streams. I think this is the case with the Necanicum, don't those fish come from Nehalem Hatchery?

[This message has been edited by chnookie (edited 02-06-2001).]

[This message has been edited by chnookie (edited 02-06-2001).]

[jawbreaker]

I find it interesting how this topic relates to something that RT had said in an earlier thread about the Sandy River controversy. "Hatchery smolts compete with native smolts for limited food supply." It seems reasonable to me that if we took 50% of the surplus fish and started a carcass program as jellyhead suggested, then used the other 50% of the surplus and move them to the lakes for the kids and non river fishers, we would see
a larger return of steelhead. In my humble opinion, starvation is a major contributor to high mortality rates in smolts. It seems like everyone is so focused on the "genetics" of interbreeding that the basic fundamentals of survival are being overlooked. Like food, cover to hide from predators, stream management. Sorry if I got off on a tangent there but I don't think the solution has to be complicated....my .02..... http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[OneLastCast]

Just a general reply,

I have heard this "Hatchery smolts compete with native smolts for limited food supply." arguement several times and it has always made me stop and think...if 100 years ago our fish runs were many times larger than what they are now, wouldn't there have been many times more smolts than what exist now? And if in reality that the current combined hatchery run and existing native run is considerably smaller than historic native runs then why the concern about competition?

Just thinking
OneLastCast

[Salmonator]

While on the topic of spawning finclips, has anyone ever caught nice brite fish in the faster parts of holding water (not spawning areas) that were spilling eggs all over the bank? I have caught several Alsea fish that deposited eggs all over the bank despite their chrome sides and the faster water they're holding in. I'm guessing that alot of these hatchery run-backs are failing the spawn dance. Any ideas??

[Deleted User]

Ollie, I understand your point. However, I would think that the streams today just don't have anywhere near the ecosystem feed per river mile as they used to when all those smolts shared nature's uninterupted bounty. With less riparian habitat to provide air to water insect feed, and more silt covering up fishfood's spawning/living habitat, such as aquatic insects and crawfish etc., there just isn't as much or enough fingerling food in the rivers anymore to provide for both brat and nate smolts. ... I've heard others post/mention that the fish did alright for millions of years and should do fine in the long run. Those people just aren't taking into consideration that we don't have the same world environment the last few hundred years, especially the last hundred, that was present for those previous millions of years. - RT

[rob]

Not to make light of our reduced fish runs, but things were not static for the millions of years preceding development of the NW. The puget sound was burried in ice around 12,000 years ago and the puget sound rivers (which were also glaciated) developed runs again. Plus the unimaginable floods of the whole Columbia Basin.
Anyway, I'm still on the side of conservation and I'm up late. The human induced changes have occured at an incredibly fast rate.

[smilesforu]

There have been some studies recently released about supplementing the smolts in the river systems. They have had excellent results in those systems. One of the big factors in the health of all the species of a stream is the health of the other species that die for the smolts to eat the carcasses.
The more carcasses left in the stream....the more small fish that can survive with out over populating the stream. We need more food for all the smolts in the streams. We should supplement our systems with a larger food base to enhance the fish carrying capacity until it is healthy enough to generate its own ecosystem food supply. One of the local fish restoration projects puts dead fish carcasses in the restored stream bead area. The smolts just love to eat the dead carcasses. Here is a local project involved in the restoration of a tributary of the Sol Duc river. Silvers have repopulated the tiny side channel and use the man made spawning bed on there own once the culvert was replaced. Fish are amazingly resilent if given a chance.
http://www.steelheader.net/eaglecreek/

Tight Lines

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Marty M
Steelheader.net (http://www.steelheader.net/)

[Hoosier Daddy]

A good point above on starving salmon and steelhead. I have seen or heard of very little research on starvation, so I don't know if its a real problem or not. In places I suspect it might be. However, unless we know through some kind of science that fish are starving, lets not say that's the case. Problems may also be related to predation, stress, temperature, etc. The reason I bring this up is not to contest what Jawbreaker said about how he thinks starvation is a big problem (paraphrase). The reason I mention it is a STS article I read a few months ago, written by Frank Amato, that said he had seen a bunch of starving steelhead smolts on a fishing trip. He had a picture too. He did not state anywhere in the article what evidence he had that they were starving. Not a mention of "they looked skinny", 'they were dying as I watched them and were skinny", nothing. To me, this totally screwed his article and his point to hell. I'm sure he was just looking for a lead in to the article, but this one was so weak it was pathetic. He went on to complain about how the DFW's are refusing to fertilize streams with carcasses, his reason being that it was too easy a solution, and they would lose money and jobs. Needless to say, as readers of this page know, ODFW IS doing ferilization projects. I think more will be better, but they are working on it. There are considerations with DEQ, etc. that slow this process down, but hey.....

On the subject of why there were many more fish before and they did fine. One of the reasons there was more fish was probably because there was more fish. Fertilization, baby. Lots of carcasses=lots of food=lots of surviving baby fish (mostly).