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Which type of fish fights harder & struggles longer, hatchery born or natural origin?

  • Wild typically fish fight harder and struggle longer than hatchery fish.

    Votes: 134 61.2%
  • Hatchery fish typically fight harder and struggle longer than wild fish.

    Votes: 7 3.2%
  • There is no difference. Hatchery fish and wild fish fisht the same.

    Votes: 78 35.6%

Which fish fights better? (poll)

5K views 56 replies 41 participants last post by  joemomma 
#1 Ā·
Based on your personal expirience in hook and line fishing, which fish fights harder and struggles longer? Hatchery fish or Wild fish?

Please take a moment, think back, and base your answer only on your own personal expirience with fish that you have actually caught yourself.

Thanks, Brad
 
#3 Ā·
If we could tell if a fish was wild or hatchery by the way it fought ... nah I'm gonna stop. Which fights harder a 22lb wild steelhead or a 22lb hatchery steelhead? Who cares, everybody would be happy with a 22lb steelhead.
 
#4 Ā·
It doesn't happen every time, but I've had a number of clipped CR springers and summer steelhead up to the boat and on their side before I could get the net out. I've never had a native so cooperative.

I've not noticed a difference in Willie springers.
 
#5 Ā·
There are hard-fighting wild fish and there are hard-fighting hatchery fish. Of all the steelhead I have had the pleasure to hook and play, the hardest fighting of all have been hatchery fish.

A 15-17 pound hatchery hen (I think) on the N.F. Nehalem absolutely would not stop.

An 8-10 pound Fish First hatchery summer fish on the N.F. Lewis nearly spooled my partner's Curado, heading upstream all the time. We will never forget that fish.

And several other examples.

On the other hand, the biggest steelhead I've had on were natives, and they were, by and large, wimps.

Steelhead are steelhead. Tough ones and pushovers. Origin has nothing to do with it.
 
#9 Ā·
I think more often then not the current effects from life histories influence how fish fight... These same influence affect how well fish bite...

Fish that are moving often are less or more aggresive and sometimes don't fight as hard, as they have been expending much of their energy moving and have litte left to spare... Seems to me that many hatchery fish are often lost or disoreintated and end up have a much higher in river time then wild fish that seem to be on a mission.

My point is that there are independent factors that affect the way wild and hatchery fish fight... No doubt that wild fish are more aggressive and 2 or 3 to one as easy to catch and their hatchery cousins.
 
#11 Ā·
I assume we're talking steelhead? There are some wild duds and some hatchery rockets, but apples to apples I think it's no contest in favor of wild fish.

When you compare hatchery to wild steelhead, you have to compare summer runs to summer runs, winter runs to winter runs and in the same stretches of the same rivers. No fair to compare April summer brats to April winter nates (I've heard people make this comparison before in favor of the hatchery summer runs, which are 9 months away from spawning instead of 9 days for the nates....no fair). I think the difference in fighting ability really shows up in fish that have been out of the ocean longer and run further up the river.

Also, take into account the proven increased willingness of wild fish to bite a lure. Indeed, some of the wild duds have likely been caught and released already.

I think some broodstock brats fight better than the mass-produced variety.
:twocents:
 
#12 Ā·
Every fish is different, and I've caught hatchery fish that have kicked my ass, and wild fish that fought like socks, but the best fighting steelhead...by far, very far...are springtime mid-teen wild hens...they'll jump, rip around, up and down, jump again, and go berserk.

The twenty plus wild bucks are real bulldogs, but don't often fight like anything other than a big Chinook or a big chum...they pull, and they pull hard, but they're not really exciting fights.

Chambers stock winter run hatchery fish might be the worse fighting fish that inhabit our Washington waters...hookup, headshake, crank 'em right in. End of story.

If you know where to find them, the wild summers around here are really exciting fighters, but they tend to be pretty small so they don't fight for long...but it's a really exciting thirty seconds, considering they tend to spend twenty of those seconds three feet up in the air!

Fish on...

Todd
 
#15 Ā·
So can you guys all tell if a fish is wild or hatchery when you hook it, before you give it a visual fin check?
Not 100%, but often. Depends a bit on the hatchery stock in the area IMHO. Sometimes, I feel I can tell the difference between hatchery stocks too: Ex Deschutes strain brats (max clipped) fight better IMO than the Snake River brats that outnumber the local fish in the Deschutes.
 
#19 Ā· (Edited)
I'd have to say wild yellowtail.
However there aren't no hatchery yellow's to comapare with.

Seriously the last 3 years I've been fishing a bank spot on the Columbia where fishing & catching is phenominal (thank you WDFW for allowing us to buy a second steelhead card now).

The conditions are the same for all the fish and they are all just moving along the bank migrating upstream.

When it comes to the bigger fish, you rarely see a unmarked dud.
And those duds could possibly be unmarked hatchery fish.
Hatchery fish you catch quite a few duds.
Overall on the larger fish (8-12 #'s) unmarked fight better on average.

But when those small 4-5# upper river hatchery dinks come in, in late July, a lot of those puppies will tear you a new, uh, well they surprisingly kick (how do you say it without getting edited):D.
You do see a large number of unmarked dinks mixed in but I have to think those are Tribal fish or something other than wild steelies from the gravel and I haven't noticed any difference in fighing abilities.
They all go balisitic and normally do their Michael Jordan thing.

I fished the Yaquina Bay hatchery coho brat's the last year ODFW used coho before changing over to chinook stocks.
There was all the difference in the world between the wild and hatchery fish and often times an angler would call it a wild coho correctly before anyone was able to see it.

We see this sometimes with Cowlitz coho also and sometimes it's "fish on" and then abruptly, "in the boat" (hatchery fish).

By the way Brad, looking at your poll decriptions...what's a "wild typically fish"? :D
 
#20 Ā·
if we're talking about winter runs, most hatchery fish fight like a wet sock, but there are exceptions. summer runs from the hatchery are usually pretty good fighters.

kings and silvers, i never seem to be able to tell if a fish is clipped or not, but the real issue is that their hatchery counterparts are almost always terrible biters!
 
#24 Ā·
Me too. But I think I get it now. Wild fish fight harder than hatch fish, and if you are a master angler you can tell if its wild by the way it fights. Except for tribal releases, unclipped hatch fish, or recently previously caught wild fish, because they don't fight as hard?
 
#22 Ā·
I would just add that the superior aggressiveness and fighting ability of wild fish is one of the main reasons I'd like to see less emphasis on hatcheries in the NW and more emphasis on habitat recovery. I feel like we're often not fishing for "real" salmon and steelhead, but for domesticated "livestock". Kind of like hunting for chickens instead of pheasant. Ever read "The Western Angler" by Roderick Haig-Brown? The salmonids he described in southern BC in 1930 are not the salmonids of today in most places.:twocents:
 
#29 Ā·
Apparently you are not grasping the concept of educated guess.

Heads or Tails is not an educated guess.

So, here is a hypothetical situation:

Fish is hooked.

Past experience and statistics (reasoning and logic) show that samples from Group A behaves in a certain manner and samples from Group B behaves in a certain manner. Thus, applying the trends in behavior from each sample to the hypothetical hook up, a good guess could be made.

That is an educated guess.
 
#28 Ā·
I think the hardest fighting fish are normally residents of rivers far inland and when encountered early in their travels these represent the best of the best. These same fish will also be influenced by the extreme waters they are designed to travel.
This may not apply to all long running fish as some are from watersheds that do not create the body style that makes for a hard fighting fish.

That being said some rivers boast winter runs of amazing strength as well, but again river make up will dictate their body design.

I post a picture of a doe Steelhead from the Thompson River as an example, this fish jumped probably 12 times and did at least 4-5 100 yards runs under the strain of heavy gear (12 foot rods-300 yard spools and 25 main - 20 leader). These fish are well known for this kind of display and some are unstoppable.

Built for speed and power


Certainly their river of origin is the defining factor in why they are this way.
When the Thompson had wild-brood hatchery fish, they were exactly the same.
Running in early fall also aids in this fighting ability, as the water is quite warm compared to winter run temps.

On the other hand, each and every steelhead river has its mix of poor and good scrappers within its boundaries.
 
#34 Ā·
I voted wild in the poll, but I actually have a few qualifiers to that observation.

My experience on summer steelhead, mostly caught in fall/winter on the eastside, is that wild steelhead USUALLY fight harder and jump more than hatchery fish. Obviously there are exceptions but out of many hundreds of fish we usually can guess correctly (before seeing the fish) about 70% of the time. However, because they fight more energetically they sometimes tire themselves out so the overall fight length isn't appreciably different between the two.

Unlike the steelhead, I've never been able to tell any difference between the fight of hatchery and wild salmon.
 
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