At least there’s the safe areas…
On the bright side Columbia fall chinook stayed open all season in the dead zone, and nature found a way to produce a pile of coho on the upper Willy. Thanks for the heads up 🤜🤛

 

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We need to get on top of the ceaseless antis in their attacks.

 

We need to get on top of the ceaseless antis in their attacks.

Is that the issue, or is it a budget/facility situation?

 

I heard a rumor that ODFW will be supplying a container of Vaseline with license purchases in 2025.

 

That will be an additional required fee/endorsement.

 

That’s disappointing… this is one of the areas I cut my teeth tributary fishing for salmon. Yet another opportunity lost.

 

I can see it now. Those "inferior" hatchery brats that don't get caught will soon start propagating on their own, resulting in more unclipped coho that we are unable to retain in the main stem fishery and will have no limit in eagle creek, as they will be seen as a problem. It's happened in other areas where this has already happened. 😮‍💨🙄

 

When they come back to the hatchery they will be knocked in the head.

 

1. It's Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery (ie not ODFW, dont blame them)
2. According to the Eagle Creek NFH website, the facility has a production objective of releasing about 350K into Eagle Creek and 500K to the upriver tribes. Recent release records show numbers above these numbers.

Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery

Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery raises approximately 850,000 coho salmon annually. The hatchery releases 350,000 coho on site, while 500,000 coho are transferred to the Yakama Nation to support coho restoration projects in their watersheds. The coho program operates as a segregated harvest...

www.fws.gov

If even those in the know dont know it may not be a final decision. I would be surprised that USFWS would close the hatchery. It may be that with the success of upriver coho reintroduction programs there isn't the need to continue using Eagle Creek NFH for this purpose.

 

1. It's Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery (ie not ODFW, dont blame them)
2. According to the Eagle Creek NFH website, the facility has a production objective of releasing about 350K into Eagle Creek and 500K to the upriver tribes. Recent release records show numbers above these numbers.

Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery

Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery raises approximately 850,000 coho salmon annually. The hatchery releases 350,000 coho on site, while 500,000 coho are transferred to the Yakama Nation to support coho restoration projects in their watersheds. The coho program operates as a segregated harvest...

www.fws.gov

If even those in the know dont know it may not be a final decision. I would be surprised that USFWS would close the hatchery. It may be that with the success of upriver coho reintroduction programs there isn't the need to continue using Eagle Creek NFH for this purpose.

View attachment 1049262

You are correct Darth, the production is no longer needed for reintroduction programs. However Eagle Creek proper releases would end. It was on the chopping block last year and this time (hear say) the decision is final. The source telling me this is intimately involved with hatchery operations there. Sad for sure.

 

I'm suprised they can haul them a long distance without a high degree of mortality. Interesting.

 

Fish are released in March/April; water is cold. With lower density in the tanks apparently the fish can tolerate 6-8hrs in the truck tanks.

 

Free education is a "pet project"?

 

This is a disappointment, I enjoy fishing the Clack in the early fall for a keeper fish or two, and watching these fish move thru the system.

 

Well, let’s all catch a bunch and transport them above the hatchery and make our own fishery.

 

When I was in college at MHCC my lab partner and I did a study on EC. The results of the fitness of that stream were off the charts for supporting salmonid sustainability. We could never figure out why the returns to hatchery kept dropping off, especially for winter steelhead. Our study was done two years after the record returns. It's a sad day for me. Growing up in Oregon City, this is the second (rather 3rd if you count the BC/GC steelies they took away) fishery that has disappeared in my lifetime. First the upper Clackamas summers and now Eagle Creek. UGGGG !

 

No fish of any kind raised at Eagle Creek hatchery going forward? And no hatchery fish at all released into Eagle Creek anymore? Is that what I'm reading?

 

That is my understanding WC.

 

There's plenty of money in the world today it seems. Could a private organization take over the hatchery and continue to proliferate the system?

I'm sure there would be backlash from both ODFW as well as the idiots like NFS.

 

Please say that out loud at the ODFW Commission meeting in December 🤓

 

Gubment don’t like competition

 

Elon and Space X can land a rocket on a 30' square pad from orbit. Maybe they could help with the Clack and other N.W. Salmon Runs. The Tribes alone could save our Salmon with more $ funding and if the Greenies were kept at bay.

 

Sigh... I had hoped for years that some sort of broodstock program or some ability to maintain spawning segregation between wild and hatchery stocks would allow hatchery fish propagation to continue on Eagle Creek, especially since it's so close to PDX. In the end, it appears to be, not wild vs hatchery issues killing the program, but budget constraints. I hate to say it, but I don't see budget issues getting any better soon. The Eagle Creek hatchery was a national hatchery and our nation has max'ed out its credit card. They can still print all the money they want, but only until the bond market breaks, which looks more likely than ever IMHO - no matter next month's result. Our debt/GDP is at post-WW2 levels. We haven't had a balanced budget since the tech bubble. Upsetting to see it affect fish hatcheries. I hope the wild stocks do well... Thanks for the info AA.

 

The antis proved no monetary return on investment.

 

If they just closed Eagle Creek for all salmon and steelhead fishing for 5 years, all the remaining Hatchery fish would spawn naturally and then the government would call them natives, and be put under protection…

Look at the Green Peter scam lowering the water levels to increase smolt survival for fish that were originally planted… Are those really native fish? Hell…. At this stage in the game I’d bet there are more cross breed fish native and hatchery than anyone can really know for certain.

 

Our rivers, streams, and oceans no longer exist in original condition. There's a point at which the differences between native, wild, and residual hatchery fish become meaningless. I think that point is when there's a major survival challenge, like now (multiple challenges including lower flows, altered channels, and climate change). The fish that can survive and propagate the best are the ones we want in the river. Without hatchery production, that's what we'll have left in Eagle Creek. One problem with hatcheries has always been the threat of funding problems to keep it going, as we're seeing here. (I'm not against hatcheries) I'm confident the wild fish will hang on, if at low levels. I hope it's enough for a fishing season.

 

If you can't keep a fish what's the point?

I don't buy a Sportspac for opportunity. I buy a Sportspac to harvest the resources for consumption.

 

Chris N. This is a tough nut to crack. Several thoughts come to mind and my first one was the inability of our hatcheries to raise viable robust smolts. If they’re not built to survive, they won’t. They’re panmered in non stream like conditions, over fed and possibly their release times ore poorly timed. When survival from egg to returning adult isn’t any better, (maybe worse) than wild spawned, the system is completely at fault.

Another issue is stream fertility. The fertility is based on the condition of the entire watershed, not just the stream bed. The testing of water samples and comparing them to those from the days when stream production would reveal changes for sure. It doesn’t take much change to produce a dramatic effect.

High water events affect stream condition along with the food supply. They destroy/change the entire stream bed and the tiny organisms that live there, including things as large as Crawdads. A stream that doesn’t support a large Crawdad population of all age groups has a real problem. This isn’t difficult to document.

Smolt size/age: Naturally spawned fish take a very leisurely trip downstream to the salt. Once they reach brackish water they hang around a while, taking advantage of the abundant food supply and adjusting to the new environment. There’s nothing leisurely (natural) about the hatchery smolt migration, it’s quick and over with because of their size and release date. They also overwhelm the food supply in many streams by their sheer numbers when they’re all released at once. Stream fertility plays an important part here as well.

I’ll stop, you get the idea.

 

If you can't keep a fish what's the point?

The "chase". Is that "fair"? I love eating fish too, but will be the first to say that wild fish (esp steelhead) are more aggressive and better fighters on average. A great fish to me isn't a cookie cutter hatchery brat, it's any fish that kicks my butt or otherwise makes me giggle at what just happened. They're why I set my alarm clock the night before a fishing trip.

Again, for those in the back row, rivers die when hatcheries are closed.

Rivers also die when flows dry up and when the ocean is sick.

 

The US has spent more than $2B on a plan to save salmon. The fish are vanishing anyway.

The U.S. government promised Native tribes in the Pacific Northwest that they could keep fishing as they’d always done. But instead of preserving wild salmon, it propped up a failing system of hatcheries. Now, that system is falling apart.

www.klcc.org

,

 

WORD!

 

I might be wrong but that's the hatchery that supplies smolts to a local river near me. Will be interested to see the outcome going forward. And this is in WA state FYI.

 

There's some great salmon fishing in New York.

Eating? Maybe not so much.

 

"Fresher than fresh" LOL!

 

Define, “great.”

 

I've seen on TV. The river choked with huge salmon. HUGE, dark brown, salmon. You can walk across the rivers on the backs of salmon! Didn't all those Chinooks come from the Northwest? Though as I think I understand, the massive alewife population in The Great Lakes is what feeds the runs?
I dunno, seems we're too hung up on turning things back to where they were a couple hundred years ago. I no longer pay them more and more for less and less. Doesn't mean I'm not saddened for those still paying them.

 

There's not a single fish in the Great Lakes that equals a good NW chinook or steelhead for eating. Fun to catch, yes, but waiter, please serve the PCB's and pfas on the side.....