Like most anglers I knew little about hatchery fish other than their sporting qualities. After reading Anders Halvorsen’s book on the history of the hatcheries and the rise of the rainbow trout, I realize that much of the eye-opening information cited has always been there – only buried diligently in those sections of the paper we didn’t read.

How the focus of the hatchery business morphed into happy anglers carting home limits of  fish, and the antiquated notion of species introduction, re-introduction, and sustainability,  was jettisoned in the transition. More troublesome was the notion that despite the best efforts of biologists, planted fish had introduced many diseases into the watershed – and resident fish had to compete with the interlopers as well as survive their lethal payload.

Some poor fellow asked my Fish & Game department about the decline of Lake Oroville, and the polite response includes a familiar litany of sins …

The brown trout program was considered unsuccessful because they were hard to catch and so the return to creel was too low to justify continuing the program.

The first coho program began in the 1980s as a net pen operation in Lake Oroville. It was discovered that when fish were grown to larger sizes to meet angler expectations, they developed a bacterial disease that infected their kidneys. To protect other fishery resources, DFG ordered these fish destroyed.

The coldwater fishery program for the lake was then changed to inland Chinook (king salmon) that were planted in the 1990s.This provided a good fishery for several years. Then in 1998 and 2000, Chinook salmon at Feather River Hatchery (which receives lake water) started getting infected with the infectious haematopoietic necrosis (IHN) virus, which killed up to a quarter of the Chinook salmon smolts DFG raised. Also in 2000, the entire inland Chinook program for Lake Oroville became diseased with IHN and had to be destroyed. After much research, it was determined that the virus was being sustained and multiplied by the large numbers of salmon in the lake. The virus probably originated at a very low level in the river that flowed into the lake (created by the Oroville Dam built in 1968) but had been kept undetectable by the lack of good hosts. The disease has always been found in fish below the dam and in returning salmon adults every year.

After more research to determine which fish would not be good hosts for the virus, coho were again planted, but this time, in an effort to avoid the bacterial kidney disease problem, they were raised at the hatchery annex on well water instead of in net pens in the lake.

– via the Los Angeles Times

Take the current mentality a couple decades into the future and they’ll be introducing fish that breathe air – so they pop up at intervals and you can shoot them …

… that way you can just cut around the holes and make the piscatorial equivalent of a Double Down, yet imbued with precious Omega-3’s and cordite.

But wait, there’s more …

Auditors in Washington state have completed a review of the Chinook program in the Puget sound, and concluded that each salmon landed costs the state $768 (excluding the costs of your tackle and bait).

Each year the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife produces hundreds of thousands of the juvenile salmon in hatcheries, then raises them for 14 months or more in ponds until they lose the instinct to migrate. Then the fish are released for fishermen to hook for sport.

But some of the same environmental conditions that helped push wild chinook onto the Endangered Species list – such as pollution and habitat loss from development – mean few of the young blackmouth live long enough to get snagged. And the many fishing restrictions imposed in response to the 1999 listing of wild chinook also scaled back chances for anglers to try to catch the hatchery chinook.

That means catch rates for blackmouth are such a fraction of what they once were that the state may produce 900 fish for every one an angler nets. And each of those 900 fish costs about 85 cents.

– via the Olympian

But not to worry, the program is paid for by license dollars, and therefore not a black eye to any current or future administration …

We march dutifully up to the counter each year in the hope the $37 helps fish somehow – and the sordid details emerge later. My contribution to the state’s inland fisheries was $12 diverted to the creation of a red licorice factory on a reclaimed military reservation – owned by someone I wouldn’t like instinctively, $3 went to repaying the Governor’s election debt, and the remaining $25 bought the “pucker” on a Chinook…

… I always thought it was a big bucket of fry that I paid for – hurled into a creek by a good natured fellow who whistled and waved at the departing fish before filling the bucket with the next guy’s contribution …

Tags: Anders Halvorsen, Lake Oroville, hatchery fish, Washington state auditors, chinook salmon, Puget Sound, fish disease