Replanting brats-post spawn ALIVE!

[_LIPPEE]

Why did'nt you go to work for the ODFW 30 year's ago.

[Hoosier Daddy]

Ooooohhh. Nice jab. Good point though, that if it had been known 30 years ago, it probably would have been done.

[fishhead5]

Bugleman2u that would take common sense, something that is not required to work there. I asked why they don't spawn big ones with big ones and was told that all the big ones would eat everything and leave nothing for the little ones. Go figure

[Hoosier Daddy]

Little fish are little for a reason, and there is a reason(s) why little fish are still around in native populations. Breeding for big fish only doesn't work. What do you think was done for the first 100 yrs or so in hatchery practices, it didn't work well then either.

[BUGLEMAN]

It is my feeling (speculation) that alot of things were suspected or known about fish biology and ignored due to politics/ lazyness and lack of budget. I'm not saying we need to make big fish because as others have stated the genetics for little ones has survived for good reason. But I think putting spawned hatchery fish back into the river could prove to be cheaper than raising the 50-100 smolt to get one back. Even if only one out of 10 steelhead survive to go down the river and into the ocean again to return to the Hatch for the second time that leaves an equivelant savings for your effort of raising 5-10 smolt plus you get carcasses distributed in the river. I am currious to hear if any biologists have an opinion.

[fishhead5]

The Quinault average hatchery fish is 12#. They have lots of fish. In the 70's they started a hatchery program to save the fish in their river. Guess what 30 years later they have the biggest hatchery fish, the most fish and a prolific native run. 100 years later we still have no fish. I'll ask a really stupid question, what are they doing different? First they started out planting chum salmon. Why, to enrich the river with nutrients, so the fry would have something to eat. Next they took broodstock out of their own river so not to mess up the gene pool. They also don't breed little fish to little fish, they will breed a little fish to a big fish. They had a big slide on the river one year, silted it up real bad. Bad enough they were worried about the spawning beds. The solution was to reroute the river, try and do that today. So chnookie when you say they didn't have the solution 30 years ago I beg to differ. The proof is in the Quinault. Sure all rivers are not the same and the results wouldn't be the same. But with some common sense and get politicians out of it. I think the fishing would improve greatly and quickly.

[ssteelheadsteve]

Bugleman2
Nice Idea BUT...Steelhead returning to spawn a second time are usually about the same size/weight as when they made their first spawning run.

[BUGLEMAN]

I think ODFW is experimenting with this. I hope they do a cost benefit analysis.

How about live stripping the eggs and milt from the ripe Hatch spawners and then putting them back in the river. Let them swim around and either fertilize the river or snake on back to the ocean and give us another shot at them when they are 15-20lbs. Releasing live fish would eliminate the DEQ problem and also let the things distribute themselves before dying. This makes the most sense to me. Why didn't ODFW think of this 30 yrs ago? Is there not enough budget? I am sure some of us would gladly help at peak spawning time to give these guys another shot up the river.

[Hoosier Daddy]

Good points all. Bugleman, I'm sure that is true that a lot of stuff was ignored, 30 years ago, biologists tended to think they knew more than they did, and made some poor decisions because of it. Even today, scientists are still learning new things that tell them what they did even 5 years ago was probably not a good idea, given the latest science. And you make a good point about how leaving those fish in the river might be cheaper. The only other factor would be increased fry mortality out of the hatchery.
Fishead, also a good point. But lets realize that it took most of the 30 years on the Quinalt to figure out that it worked.
Steelheadsteve, exactly. All evidence does support the fact that generally those that do make it back a second time have just recovered what they lost on the first run, and rarely gain any size in the meantime.