Compressed Fish Runs

[Steve]

Ever notice how the runs of fish are getting shorter timewise, on the Clackamas the silvers would start the first rain in Sept. and run thru January...the best day of Silver fishing for me was Jan.1 1988 on the Clackamas with bright solid fish...now the run is compressed to less than a month and by the end of the month the fish are black or dead and dying... I under stand that the hatcheries flush all their fish at one time. This is like putting all your chicken eggs in one basket...if the school hits a toxic section of the Willamette and die..one generation wiped out? I know that there are a lot of hatcheries out there, anybody know if they co-ordinate releases...?

[Pilar]

Steve, could this be because of the weather? Fish hold until rain and then poof, they're gone? Or maybe the hatchery part of the run is much bigger now? Somebody must know the answer to this one.

The bend is your friend!

[Hoosier Daddy]

Historically, hatcheries monkeyed (unintentionally mostly) with run timing all the time, until they figured out that was a bad thing. The Alsea was a great example. They would take fish from only a certain time of the run, and lo and behold, after a few years, that's all they got. So, hatchery practices can alter things, but they are run to avoid stuff like this nowadays and do a pretty good job. But like any agricultural type business, there is a certain amount of homogenization that goes on, because all fish get treated the same. So its possible this is part of what has caused it. It's also entirely possible (ie VERY LIKELY) that what you're talking about is totally natural. Run timings shift around for reasons we can't understand. It's part of the fish population's survival mechanism to have this variability built in, just like having a jack life stage. Could be a natural response to any number of things like 96' flood, changes in rainfall, El N-word, La N-word, etc.
That's my $2.53 worth anyways.

[rob allen]

Thats the problem with hatchery quotas they take the first how wver many fish and use only thoes fish as their broodstock. I dont know how much they do that anymore but thats what they used to do. Thats also why there are so few early returning wild winter steelhead left. Often rivers with little hatchery influence have the most widely spread out runs. The Klickitat is a perfect example it it only gets a small plans of skamania steelhead and it gets fresh steelhead 365 days a year

[Hoosier Daddy]

They don't do it that way anymore, but some of the damage was already done.