Steelhead Reports and Pics 2012-2013

[BlakeP]

Nice fish boys!

Guess whos going to sequim thursday for "family time"? this guy!! gonna go hit the rivers probably 2 days at least and get some fishing in

Good luck, fishing over here is pretty slow right now.

[natetreat]

Slow, but like I was telling Danny, I haven't given up hope. They will come. If we fish it, they will come. This one here is for ODH -

[natetreat]

slayersteel.jpg (17.79 KiB) Viewed 2176 times

Whoops, too big

[natetreat]

Oh and BTW, weighed the fish when we got home, and it was 13 and 12 ounces, we're right on the money on estimating the weight. That's pretty cool.

[goodtimesfishing]

they will come!

[RiverChromeGS]

Oh and BTW, weighed the fish when we got home, and it was 13 and 12 ounces, we're right on the money on estimating the weight. That's pretty cool.

Sweet! I guessed 12.5. Nice suprise to underestimate, causr u know most fishermen do the opposite

[RiverChromeGS]

they will come!

A guy in another thread mentioned that besides last year which was obviously a banner year, this is pretty average for the cascade. Too tell ya the truth in years past this seems pretty normal, but then again there was only 5 guys or less every day so it evened out. With a normal smaller run and 10x people it might just be a bad year

[natetreat]

It's slow everywhere right now, so I expect is has something to do with area climate. We had that warm spell of no rain, and if steelhead really do "smell" there home which kick in their instinct to return, maybe they don't like the smell of low water and have been waiting for the good stuff to get out to their secret ocean haunts. If that's the case, than it would be logical to assume that since they want to assure that the temperature and conditions are to their liking, they'll come back after it has been stable already. We put in smolts, so unless they died for some strange reason that is not predictable, they'll come back within the normal rates of return, it just won't be until next week. That's what I'm betting on.

[natetreat]

Last year on the 15th of december we had only an escapement of 20 fish on the Cascade, but by the 26th it jumped to 56, January 26th it was 217, which is a big difference and the majority of the fish showed up within the first week of January, last week of December. Combined with the sport take from the fish, that shows that the run can be expected to show up then. I expect that we will see a very nice push of fish in all our area rivers in the next few weeks, at least in the Cascade I know the fish hung around in the river for a while before the pushed the creek, and traditionally steelhead in the sound area is later than on the coastal streams, and that's evidenced by the counts on the hump and the bogey being around 200 which is the same as last year. There is no cause for alarm, last year we just had a nice early push because the conditions were ideal those first weeks of December. Which is good news for everyone out there, because they haven't missed out and can still book a trip with me to learn how to slay these wily bastards! *shameless plug*

[fish vacuum]

You say this and yet EVERY SINGLE BROODSTOCK PROGRAM FROM CALIFORNIA TO ALASKA IS INCREDIBLY SUCCESSFUL.
, and now we have none. The sol duc was awesome cause it was packed with wild fish and yet you still had the chance to kill a trophy steelhead, say goodbye to that. Stupid stupid stupid

How are you measuring the success of a broodstock program? It's taking wild fish out of the river and turning them into hatchery fish. How is it better to remove those wild fish and turn their progeny into hatchery fish when the wild fish would spawn and create returning fish on their own for free?
If the broodstock program results in more returning fish in the river, then maybe it could be called successful. But the return rates for fish from a hatchery are almost always LOWER than the rates for wild spawned fish.

[Bodofish]

You say this and yet EVERY SINGLE BROODSTOCK PROGRAM FROM CALIFORNIA TO ALASKA IS INCREDIBLY SUCCESSFUL.
, and now we have none. The sol duc was awesome cause it was packed with wild fish and yet you still had the chance to kill a trophy steelhead, say goodbye to that. Stupid stupid stupid

How are you measuring the success of a broodstock program? It's taking wild fish out of the river and turning them into hatchery fish. How is it better to remove those wild fish and turn their progeny into hatchery fish when the wild fish would spawn and create returning fish on their own for free?
If the broodstock program results in more returning fish in the river, then maybe it could be called successful. But the return rates for fish from a hatchery are almost always LOWER than the rates for wild spawned fish.

Not from any data I've seen.....

[Dan Boone]

You say this and yet EVERY SINGLE BROODSTOCK PROGRAM FROM CALIFORNIA TO ALASKA IS INCREDIBLY SUCCESSFUL.
, and now we have none. The sol duc was awesome cause it was packed with wild fish and yet you still had the chance to kill a trophy steelhead, say goodbye to that. Stupid stupid stupid

How are you measuring the success of a broodstock program? It's taking wild fish out of the river and turning them into hatchery fish. How is it better to remove those wild fish and turn their progeny into hatchery fish when the wild fish would spawn and create returning fish on their own for free?
If the broodstock program results in more returning fish in the river, then maybe it could be called successful. But the return rates for fish from a hatchery are almost always LOWER than the rates for wild spawned fish.

[Kockmandoo]

As a response to the broodstock thing. The vedder receives 120,000 broodstock smolts from the hatchery each year. this is enough to sustain a run of hatchery fish that lasts for 4 months on a river that is much larger than the cascade which receives 200,000 smolts. Granted there are many factors affecting this such as netting, habitat, that sort of thing. But regardless, the Vedder program has a really successful broodstock program if it is able to sustain off this many fish. Also something to consider. I don't know if I can dig up the video, but there is a video of the broodstock smolts being released into the river and they are really big for smolts. Some of them are close to 16 inches. I personally believe broodstock hatchery smolts have a better survival rate than normal hatchery fish because they are a bigger, stronger, and more independent fish that can handle itself better in the wild. The problem with broodstock hatcheries is that most places in washington don't have a sutainable wild fish population. The vedder does which is why the program works. The reason the snider creek hatchery was shut down was the concern for wild fish, but somehow it's still legal to keep one native a year.......???

[RiverChromeGS]

You say this and yet EVERY SINGLE BROODSTOCK PROGRAM FROM CALIFORNIA TO ALASKA IS INCREDIBLY SUCCESSFUL.
, and now we have none. The sol duc was awesome cause it was packed with wild fish and yet you still had the chance to kill a trophy steelhead, say goodbye to that. Stupid stupid stupid

How are you measuring the success of a broodstock program? It's taking wild fish out of the river and turning them into hatchery fish. How is it better to remove those wild fish and turn their progeny into hatchery fish when the wild fish would spawn and create returning fish on their own for free?
If the broodstock program results in more returning fish in the river, then maybe it could be called successful. But the return rates for fish from a hatchery are almost always LOWER than the rates for wild spawned fish.

How in the hell do you figure fish spawning in the river, having to face floods as eggs, birds dollies other fish as smolt dieing over rapids on the way down washing out of river fron high water and EVERY OTHER FACTOR yields BETTER returns than fish raised in a hatchery to a larger size before released into the wild. I have NO IDEA where you get your information but like bodofish said, the information ive read about in many different places, especially oregon programs are extremely successful and see massive returns. No way i will ever believe naturally spawning fish with the pollution reduced spawning habitat and all the natural factors working against eggs and smolt will produce more returns than broodstock programs. Never ever

[RiverChromeGS]

You knows who's wrong and who knows who's right on this broodstock vs Wild escapement. I myself haven't done the research. But I know one thing I'm not with taking perfectly good wild fish and turn them into hatchery fish. One reason why broodstock wouldn't be a huge success in the puget sound in the cormorants in the lower estuaries and poor tidal environments. That's just my opinion though. The puget sound is not a very welcoming place for a steelhead Smolt.

Broodstock takes a very small portion of wild fish to do the escapement. The entire run of broodstock fish on the vedder on takes something like 50 pairs of wild fish and over 6000 are estimated to return. And those 50 pairs of fish result in many many more fish coming back, and since broodstock programs only use wild fish, those larger returning runs then spawn in the river and turn back into wild fish and create even larger numbers. Very successful, broodstock programs are probably the best thing to happen to a wild steelhead fishery IMO, larger returns that are never more than once removed from wild strain. Smart, revolutionary, why do ya think oregon has dozens on all those SUPER good rivers... Wilson, trask, nestucca... List goes on and on

[fish vacuum]

Very successful, broodstock programs are probably the best thing to happen to a wild steelhead fishery IMO

You can't be that stupid. Look up the science. Try to understand that you're talking to adults.

[RiverChromeGS]

Very successful, broodstock programs are probably the best thing to happen to a wild steelhead fishery IMO

You can't be that stupid. Look up the science. Try to understand that you're talking to adults.

ive looked it up, plenty, the only negative things ive ever read on broodstock is from snobby elitist fly fishermen pages and the info doesnt even make sense, they are just butthurt cause some wild fish are being used to create hatchery fish, and you can poke many many holes in their ideas. In reality, short of shutting down all sportsfishing and commercial fishing, broodstock many be the only chance to keep runs going, a lot of people support it, a lot of people hate it, personally i see very little real facts on the subject, but personally i believe the people who are against it are more against the idea of turning wild fish into hatchery fish than what broodstock really does to a fishery


i just read this on one of those pages from, of course, an elitist fly fisherman who despises broodstock:

I am a personal friend of the now retired hatchery manager who began the Vedder River Hatchery on the lower Fraser system. It had early success, and has seen significant failures in its objectives since.

WHAT? what a bunch of bull! the vedder has seen massive increases in fish numbers over the last 10 years, the amount of weigh ins at the shop increases by like 100 every year, average size is bigger, i seem to catch more and more wild fish each year, these people are flat out lieing because they hate the idea, not its effects.

[RiverChromeGS]

back to steelhead pics now... SLOW day but managed a nice little buck, saw 1 other fish on entire river all day...

[racfish]

Any keeper is a nice fish. That one there is the perfect dinner for two.

[kromekrusher]

Very successful, broodstock programs are probably the best thing to happen to a wild steelhead fishery IMO

You can't be that stupid. Look up the science. Try to understand that you're talking to adults.

ive looked it up, plenty, the only negative things ive ever read on broodstock is from snobby elitist fly fishermen pages and the info doesnt even make sense, they are just butthurt cause some wild fish are being used to create hatchery fish, and you can poke many many holes in their ideas. In reality, short of shutting down all sportsfishing and commercial fishing, broodstock many be the only chance to keep runs going, a lot of people support it, a lot of people hate it, personally i see very little real facts on the subject, but personally i believe the people who are against it are more against the idea of turning wild fish into hatchery fish than what broodstock really does to a fishery


i just read this on one of those pages from, of course, an elitist fly fisherman who despises broodstock:

I am a personal friend of the now retired hatchery manager who began the Vedder River Hatchery on the lower Fraser system. It had early success, and has seen significant failures in its objectives since.

WHAT? what a bunch of bull! the vedder has seen massive increases in fish numbers over the last 10 years, the amount of weigh ins at the shop increases by like 100 every year, average size is bigger, i seem to catch more and more wild fish each year, these people are flat out lieing because they hate the idea, not its effects.

The reason we do not have broodstock in Puget Sound is 1) Biologists say our rivers' wild steelhead population is so depressed that we cannot afford to take even a few out of the systems (why do you think we do not have catch-and-release seasons anymore?) for broodstock production, and 2) The fish would return out-of-season, well after the truncated timeline the state allows us to pursue steelhead these days. Argue nonsense and hearsay all you want, it does not matter. DUH!