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Stray Salmon

697 views 6 replies 5 participants last post by  Smalma 
#1 ·
On my way to fish for tidewater chinook onSaturday I stopped by another river and was shocked to see it high and off color. I walked to the water and immediately say a fish roll. At that point i grabbed my rods and started fishing but got no takes. So i drove to the hatchery where I found one of the hatchery workers fishing a small pool with about 100 fish in it a mix of Coho and Chinook. As I spoke with the hatchery worker i came to find out that though these fish were all hatchery NONE of them were planted in this particular river but were strays from nearby net pens which raise fish for the commercial fleet.
I had no idea that these fish strayed by the thousands into rivers they do not belong. I caught two before snaggers started showing up and ruined the fun... I came back later that afternoon and all the fish were gone, they had scattered upstream where they will spawn in a few weeks along side wild counterparts.
Lower Columbia Fall chinook "Tules" are listed as either threatened or endangered i cannot remember which and Lower Columbia coho are not listed because they are already considered extinct in most places.
given the number of fish that were rolling downstream of the hatchery and the number of pools that likely also had fish in them there had to have been at least several hundreds of these stray salmon, probably more like a thousand or more.

serious lameness...
 
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#3 ·
Salmon stray quite a bit with Chinook much more likely to stray than coho. Strays rates can be influenced by a variety of factors. One biggie is the length of time they are reared in a given location (imprint time).

Chinook rear in net pens are especially prone to stray. The net pens near used in the Lower Columbia to create "SAFE areas" for commercial fisheries have a well documented history of uncaught fish "shotgunning" to near by rivers (typically limited spawning areas at net pen sites so such straying should be expected).

BTW-
Nearly 20 years the use of net pens for Chinook in Puget Sound were eliminated for that very reason.

Curt
 
#4 ·
Salmon stray quite a bit with Chinook much more likely to stray than coho. Strays rates can be influenced by a variety of factors. One biggie is the length of time they are reared in a given location (imprint time).

Chinook rear in net pens are especially prone to stray. The net pens near used in the Lower Columbia to create "SAFE areas" for commercial fisheries have a well documented history of uncaught fish "shotgunning" to near by rivers (typically limited spawning areas at net pen sites so such straying should be expected).

BTW-
Nearly 20 years the use of net pens for Chinook in Puget Sound were eliminated for that very reason.

Curt
sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.. clearly an unjustifiable operation considering ESA.

"safe" areas i'd laugh if it wasn't so sad.
 
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