Thought I would post this. It really does not settle well with me. We get a good run and they open the limits up to a slaughter. Who can eat 80 SH in the spring? This does not sound like it is necessary. I would rather see these large numbers keep returning instead of having a massacre and going backwards to small runs. I am sure this is something to do with money.
IDAHO FISH AND GAME
HEADQUARTERS NEWS RELEASE
Boise, ID
Date: March 18, 2010
Contact: Ed Mitchell
(208) 334-3700
F&G Commission Ups Steelhead Limit On Salmon River
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission Thursday, March 18, approved a proposal to increase the limit on steelhead in the Salmon River drainage.
Anglers may now buy a second steelhead card that allows them to catch and keep 40 steelhead, in addition to the 40 fish on the first card, allowing a total of 80 steelhead for the spring season.
The increased limit applies only to waters within the Salmon River drainage now open to steelhead fishing.
Those waters include the Salmon River from its mouth upstream to the posted boundary 100 yards downstream from the Sawtooth Fish Hatchery weir, near the town of Stanley, and the Little Salmon River from its mouth upstream to the U.S. Highway 95 bridge near Smokey Boulder Road.
All anglers fishing for steelhead, even catch-and-release, must have a valid 2010 fishing license and steelhead permit. The daily limits for steelhead trout is five, no more than three may be 32 or more inches in total length. The possession limit is 15, no more than nine may be 32 or more inches long.
Steelhead anglers must stop fishing - even catch-and-release - when the bag limit is reached. Anglers must use barbless hooks, and can keep only hatchery steelhead marked with a clipped adipose fin. All other steelhead must be released unharmed immediately.
Steelhead limits in other waters have not changed. For complete rules, see the steelhead section in the 2008-2010 Fishing Seasons and Rules, or go online to:
http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/cms/fish/rules/steel.pdf.
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I wonder about this too... who really wants 80 steelhead? They say they don't want to be over-run with fish at the hatchery...
So how did you all do???
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I agree that 80 keepers is way too many for any one person even if you spread out 40 for spring and 40 for winter. if you gift them to family and friends then maybe you have a great excuse to fish on.....
I must trust and believe that F&G has crunched numbers and they wont be able to handle hatchery returns and have validated why they need to increase the limit....plus they can sell more pemits...
I hope that they can keep numbers up for years to come
match
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They only use a small percentage of the fish for spawning purposes anyway. The rest will just be trucked back down river and dumped in the kids pond or in the river to swim back up stream through the gauntlet of fishermen. Then even if they make it back to the hatchery they will probably be killed and shipped off to food banks. And I think there is only a small percentage of fishermen who will actually keep 80 fish. And its always about the money, ALWAYS, at least thats my opinion.
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I can believe the story about being over run at the hatchery, but there are better options. I would think that it would be better to harvest the eggs and milt and then transplant those fertilized eggs in other smaller tributaries to the salmon for a better wild population. I also think that they are trying to keep the run levels at a steady level. If they do to good of a job, then the SH would be delisted and a general season could be placed on them and no need for permits. F&G would loose a lot of money if they actually fulfilled their mission of returning the wild population back to and original level. They would also not get any federal money if SH were delisted or money from Idaho Power. This is all about the money. It is also weird that they did not raise the possession limit or daily limit. The hatchery was over run with salmon last year and they just transported them back to Salmon to make the run again. This seemed to work well, but it does cost money. I am also sure there are other hatcheries around the state that could take some extra and plant them in other places.
I really think once you cut through all the BS that it comes down to the fact that F&G does not want to fulfill their mission. Why put people out of work and loose money when you can just raise the limit and keep a mission going for ever.
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i think the bottom line is money. they dont use the eggs but a portion of those that return, now sure they can use the eggs for other areas but that costs money and lets face it they are hurting for money. i talked to a biologist who worked at the phersimeri hatchery last year and said they were calling food banks begging them to take fish from last year. and they had a very hard time finding ppl to take them. he siad it was sickning the amount of fish that went to waiste.
as for the thought of the fish and game not wanting to reach there goal of delisting the steelhead and salmon. i think that thought is a joke... sense idahos fish and game has very very little controll over the amount of fry released, the amount of fish taken in the ocean, and many other factors. idaho power and the feds pay and plant the fry.
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Who really cares? Fish and game obviously crunched the numbers and I have no doubt in my mind that they will reach hatchery escapement at all of the salmon river hatcheries. Only thing I would say is the steelhead this time of year are piss poor as far as eating quality. I guess if you have neighbors or relatives that you dont particularly like you could gift the fish to them.
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Why not smoke 'em if you've got 'em?
All my friends and family love 'em that way! [
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Tight lines to all!!!!!!!![fishin]
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I just read a bit on Washington's take along this line in Northwest Flyfisherman. They are considering mandatory catch and keep for hatchery steelhead this season w/ the huge returns. The reason wasn't so much money (although I'm sure there is some connection somewhere) but was the concern that hatchery steelhead lessen the genetic line of wild steelhead and so they wanted to limit them breeding together. I have to ask though, if a hatchery steelhead spawns in the wild and it's offspring hatch, grow and travel to the ocean and back naturally, aren't they wild steelhead then and it's not an issue?
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That really does not make much sense to me either. Where did the hatchery fish originate? I would think it was from wilds in the first place since they did not just appear. The wilds were milked and then we ended up with hatchery fish and that is only identified by the clipped fin. If they spawn with wilds or hatchery, then their off spring will be wild. As you said, if they go to the ocean and back, they are wild. Also, they do not clip the fins on all hatchery. They leave some with fins so the wild population will rise. The only real problem with hatchery fish is after many years of using the same genetic hatchery fish to produce more hatchery fish, the genetic lines do become weak. Seems the best thing would be to reintroduce some wild genetics back into the hatchery line to strengthen it.
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Why not just spawn the fish out? If they don't want to keep and use the fertilized eggs then dispose of them. They can also be planted in some of the larger reservoirs where they do just fine as landlocked rainbows.
Then just let the kelts return to the ocean. The females survive better, but a good number of males do also. Why do they feel they have to kill and dispose of them? They aren't salmon, and they do return more than once to spawn again.
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Cpierce and Prvt you guys need to sit down with a fisheries biologist and get yourselves clued in because quite frankly you guys are clueless....... First of all yes our fish did come from wild fish in the beginning but that was years ago. The hatchery fish now are the product of years of inbreeding within the hatchery and are genetically inferior compared to their truly wild bretheren. Sure fish and game dont clip some fish but they return to the hatchery as well and just because they have and adi sure doesnt mean they are ok to breed with true wild fish. I also have to point out that probably 99.9% of Idaho steelhead are not repeat spawners and never will be. Steelhead are capable of multiple spawning runs but not to idaho and back. Generally speaking most systems that support repeat spawners are no more than 30 miles from the ocean to the spawning grounds, in many cases even less distance than that.
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I would say "clueless" is a bit of a stretch. Though I do agree that hatchery fish are genetically inferior and probably less fit due to vastly different selective pressures in the raceways vs in a natal stream and a limited gene pool, I do think it's a little naive to say that no hatchery fish spawn in the wild. Anadromous fishes have an amazing homing ability, but they certainly do stray from time to time.
And don't count out Idaho origin kelts just yet. there are people from various agencies and organizations (myself included) that are studying everything from their physiology to causes of their admittedly high mortality, to investigating reconditioning methods as a means of bolstering wild populations. As it is, iteroparity ranges from 0.5% to 2% on average (which is not too far off from what you said). So maybe I need to get clued in too, but the fact that there are repeat spawners at all means that there is some genetic push to maintain that life history trait, and we shouldn't just discount it.
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I never said anywhere that no hatchery fish spawn in the wild............. I stated "Sure fish and game dont clip some fish but they return to the hatchery as well and just because they have and adi sure doesnt mean they are ok to breed with true wild fish."
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Clueless? It seems you pretty much agreed with what I have been saying. But, since you seem to know so much about steelhead, SteelheadKid, answer me this. When a Hatchery fish is inbreed, then they become genetically inferior to the wild fish(which is what I said). So why is it that wild fish that inbreed with wild fish do not become genetically inferior to Hatchery fish?
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Well lets think about a hatchery fish is like the spoiled rich kid that lives down the street. The hatchery fish is raised from an egg in the most ideal environment possible. Once the egg hatches this idealistic lifestyle continues, being fed at the same time daily, clean water, almost zero predators, and a plethora of other factors in a hatchery fishes favor. A wild fish on the other hand has varying water conditions to deal with, predators, finding an ideal amount of food, and so on and so forth. That is why prvrt wild fish do not become genetically inferior like a hatchery fish.
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you seem very inteligant and im sure you know your stuff about steelhead. but are you a biologist? did you find out what you know first hand from a fish and game biologist. im just calling it how i see it you seem like a guy who thinks he knows everything, everything he owns is better than everybody elses. his crap dont stink and hes always got a story better than everybody elses. i know alot of people like this thats why i can say you seem like a guy who is like this. just like you probably know some biologists and can tell people that they need to be educated on steelhead because they dont know what they are talking about.
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i understand what your saying about the eggs being in perfect conditions and that you think this weakens the genetics. but dont forget these fry still have to go a thousand miles to the ocean, survive in the ocean then make the thousand mile trip back. in no way do i think thats inferior. now i do believe hatchery fish dont fight as hard but they are handled from the day they are born tell the date they are released. then again when they return. all of these fish hatchery and wild are from the same genetics, some of the strongest in the world. they come to a higher elivation and distance than any other fish in north america.
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Nice analogy, but if that were completely true, the hatchery fish would become so lazy and dumb, they would eventually never return or spawn. When a hatchery fish spawns with a wild, that makes a wild offspring with some genetically inferior hatchery genes in it. But, since they are raised in the river and not treated like (the spoiled rich kids), those offspring would eventually breed out the genetically inferior part and once again become true wilds which is what I stated in the original post about moving the fertilized eggs to another river spawning area and let nature takes its course. To me that is a much better idea than having people stuff their freezers with fish they can not eat and then end up throwing them away.
I was simply making the post to let people know about the limits and that I think F&G could do better in the way they are handling this years bumper crop of (Spoiled Rich Kids).
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I'm no biologist and I didnt even stay at a holiday inn express last night however I make it my business to be as educated as possible about salmon and steelhead because in the very near future that will be my business...... I'm not pulling random facts out of my arse my information is based on what I've read from scientific studies as well as what I've been told by both idfg biologists as well as tribal biologists. I dont claim to know it all but this is an internet bulletin board after all and I'm just trying to pass on accurate information to the guy that might not know as much as I do. Anyway I dont think I'm better than the next guy and not everything I own is better than everybody elses i just prefer to have top quality gear to enhance my fishing experience.
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