Half-pounders are NOT Steelhead

[Tony Buzolich]

Thought that would get your attention :D

I just got back from the E.C.Powell Fly Club meeting and our guest speaker tonight was Terry Jackson from the Dept. of Fish & Game. Terry heads the Steelhead Report-Restoration Card Program and is the guy that collects and analysis' the information we put on our report cards.

The question came up about half-pounders being targeted in numerous rivers throughout the state and guys calling these fish steelhead. According to the Dept of Fish & Game, these fish are NOT to be called steelhead until they reach 16 or more inches in length, and they are not to be recorded on the Steelhead Report Card. They may in fact actually be "immature" steelhead, but still come under all of the classifications of rainbow trout. There is NO genetic difference.

As so many guys target these "half-pounders" on the American, I thought this would be of interest. Guys like calling these fish steelhead, but by doing so, and recording them as such on your card, confuses the quality of the information being gathered. This information is vital to providing funding from the federal govenment so that the state can maintain and improve steelhead conditions. Only adult steelhead 16" or larger should be recorded.

Another bit of information that came up about steelhead on the American was the lack of a pure strain still existing there. Apparantly several years ago Eel River steelhead were brought in to mix with the smaller true American River strain. This was done to improve the gene pool and increase the size of the run and the size of the fish in it, the Eel River strain being a much larger fish. That's all fine and well, but, in so doing they have diluted the native American River strain to the point that it no longer exists.

Terry Jackson is not some pompous bureaucrat working for the state but really cares about improving condtions for these great fish.
TONY

[Darian]

Hi Tony,.... Somewhere in the bowels of this BB is a topic that addressed this subject. Several of the BB members expressed a similar view on this subject..... :D :D

[k.hanley]

Nice post Tony. Terry does a heck-of-a-job with the resources he has. Knowledge is key to everyone better managing these steelhead, and of course, the quality of data collected is vital to a meaningful solution for implementing management plans. I appreciate the distinction of the half-pounders from 16+ inch steelies. This will make a dramatic change in what is recognized as a river's "steelhead population." Good stuff buddy.
Cheers, Ken

[OnTheSwing]

I agree about the native strain vanishing, all but two this year were Eel hatchery ones.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

I suspect the CA DF&G has little budget to be working on anything but rearing and planting limited numbers of hatchery steelhead, salmon and trout.

I think most CA government agencies are basically "bankrupt" and just trying to get by. In the real world it is called "faking it".

If they are going to have a hatchery program on the Lower American River (50 years now), why worry about the native run??????????

__________________________________________________ __________


I am glad that someone clarified what we should be putting on our steelhead punch cards, thanks Tony.

[ycflyfisher]

Damn, I wish I'd known that Terry was going to be there. The most interesting meeting the club has ever had IMO was Bill Mitchell from JSA.

I think Terry's point about the strict deliniation on the size factor is simply a matter of data collection. It's damn difficult to get anglers to collect any data. It's even more difficult to get anglers to be consistant in the data their collecting. Most biologists I know seem to feel it's damn near impossible to recruit anglers for specific studies who they can depend on to consistantly collect good data.

I do agree that most of the fish that anglers think are 'half-pounders" in Sacto valley watersheds have never seen the salt. In Ca, I think the term "half-pounder" is almost without question, the one most commonly abused/misused by anglers. Virtually every fish caught out of the Yuba or Feather that the angler deems(this also seems to vary by angler) too small to be an adult fish is refered to as a "half-pounder". This is despite the fact that there has never been study that indicates that the half-pounder life history occurs at anything other than very infrequent, incidental levels. To my knowledge, none of the studies on Yuba river steelhead have ever recorded even a single solitary fish that had a half-pounder component in it's lifehistory. The same basically holds true for the Feather. Regardless of what anglers may want to believe, there simply isn't a frequency of pounders in either watershed to a fishable level. A direct correlation on the Feather can be drawn to the frequency of "pounders" reportedly caught by anglers and the percentage of yearling hatchery products from that season that elected not to outmigrate.

The American is a different story since those fish largely exhibit Van Arsdale genetic markers, and those Eel river fish typically express a half-pounder component in their respective LH's of about 30 percent.

Leo Shapovolov and Alan Taft did a study in the 1950's that was somewhat similar(but not nearly as comprehensive as their Waddell Creek Study) on Sacramento river/Coleman steelhead. Again, nothing from that study to really support the suposition that the half-pounder component was happening to any frequency there.




Here a link to a previous discussion on the subject:


http://www.kiene.com/messageboard/viewtopic.php?t=566
Kiene's Fly Shop - Fly Fishing Message Board | View topic - Adults and Half Pounders Question

[Mike Churchill]

Thanks for the link to the previous discussion--learned some new stuff. :shock:

For comparison, when I was in Scotland for a semester in '89 I read an interesting article in a flyfishing magazine regarding a scientific study of the life history of what they call "seatrout" = sea run browns.

In order to figure out whether the sea run trout were actually a different subspecies, they tagged trout in the spawning tributaries and tracked where they went and when they came back.

The conclusion they reached is that all of the browns in the river system they studied were one interbreeding population. Of all the eggs hatched in a (small) tributary, a certain percentage stayed in the tributary their whole lives. When they spawned the first time, they were still relatively small in size (and never got very big)

A second group migrated down to the main stem of the river until they matured, then came back at a bigger size (something like 12-14 inches if I remember right).

A third group migrated down to the estuary, where they stayed until they matured and came back to spawn the first time at something like 16-18 inches.

The final group were the "seatrout" that actuall out migrated to the salt, where they grew much bigger than the rest. I believe they found no significant genetic difference between the different groups--just a diversity of life history.

This makes sense to me as mother nature's way of minimizing the risk that a natural disaster will wipe out the whole population. 8)

(Don't hold me to the size ranges--it's been a long time since I read the article--and I can't remember the respective percentages of the population that followed each life history.) :oops:

[OnTheSwing]

I'm not sure the native strain makes much difference to the Eel one but mother nature must have picked the smaller one for a reason. Maybe its affect on the river or ability to deal with warmer water in low flows. The bigger fish are fun though.
As for the card, if their not at least 16in I dont count them.

[bubzilla]

I do agree that most of the fish that anglers think are 'half-pounders" in Sacto valley watersheds have never seen the salt. In Ca, I think the term "half-pounder" is almost without question, the one most commonly abused/misused by anglers. Virtually every fish caught out of the Yuba or Feather that the angler deems(this also seems to vary by angler) too small to be an adult fish is refered to as a "half-pounder". This is despite the fact that there has never been study that indicates that the half-pounder life history occurs at anything other than very infrequent, incidental levels. To my knowledge, none of the studies on Yuba river steelhead have ever recorded even a single solitary fish that had a half-pounder component in it's lifehistory. The same basically holds true for the Feather. Regardless of what anglers may want to believe, there simply isn't a frequency of pounders in either watershed to a fishable level. A direct correlation on the Feather can be drawn to the frequency of "pounders" reportedly caught by anglers and the percentage of yearling hatchery products from that season that elected not to outmigrate.

Those are very interesting points. Thanks for sharing them. I am really not familiar with any of those fisheries, but have observed that the term "half-pounder" is totally misused here in Oregon in as well.

It was my understanding that half-pounder life histories have only been documented on a very few rivers, e.g., Klamath and Rogue, and that biologists attributed the peculiar behavior of these fish to the Humboldt Upwelling that affects near shore water temperatures north of Point Reyes, California and south of Cape Blanco, Oregon. Supposedly that phenomena is important to not only localizing those stocks but also somehow triggering their false spawning migration. Half-pounder life history is pretty common on the Rogue--particularly among late-arriving summer fish--but I've never seen anything more than anecdotal commentaries by anglers that supports the idea that half-pounders are found universally among steelhead populations. Of course that doesn't mean that sort of research doesn't exist; it just means I've never seen it. If someone has some references that support a contrary conclusion, I’d love to read the research.

Here in Oregon there are constantly people referring to the "half-pounders" they've caught on North Coast and Willamette Valley streams. Not saying that's impossible, but their presence there would be a pretty revolutionary discovery as far as the published biology of steelhead goes. Far more likely, I would guess, is a misapplication of the term.

[Darian]

Hmmmm,.... perhaps the problem is that we're trying to use a term that was historically used to ID 2 life stages of Steelhead employing an arbitrary measure (size) instead of anything based on a study. :? :? If I recall my literature on the subject of Steelhead fishing in the 40's, correctly, the term half pounder was applied at every river on the coast that had a run, regardless of the timing of same. :? Sooo, I agree that the term is misused but it's still OK. 8) 8) :)

[bubzilla]

Darian,

I guess I don't follow your suggestion that it was meant as a reference to two different life stages? Are you saying that it referred to a juvenile stage as compared to an adult stage? It's my understanding that the term is meant to apply to a very specific life history that does not exist outside of a very small geographic area. Therefore, it's not so much a term intended to refer to young steelhead generally, but a reference to a unique behavior. And, I don't know that the references to size were arbitrary in as much as they were simply a characteristic of the fish which resulted naturally from their short stay in the ocean.

The thing is, not all adult fish even on the Rogue and Klamath have half-pounder life histories. And, even more importantly not all small fish, even on those rivers, are half-pounders. It's not just that half-pounders are little steelhead; it's that they're totally unique in terms of their behavior. Sure, we use their diminutive size as a means of recognizing them as a practical matter while angling, but it doesn't necessarily follow that every small fish in every watershed is therefore a half-pounder. I guess my objection is that there seems to be a lot of people doing that these days, and I believe that's a misapplication of the term. Of course maybe they do exist everywhere, or are more common than originally thought, but you just don't see a lot of folks with high-priced initials behind their names saying that in print.

Here's some stuff from the NOAA Status Review for Klamath Mountains Province Steelhead that summarizes some of the known science at the time of publication. Looks like from some of the citations that they were using the term very specifically as early as 1925.

"Half-Pounders

Steelhead with the life-history pattern called "half-pounder" (Snyder 1925) are steelhead that return from their first ocean season to fresh water from July through September, after only 2 to 4 months of saltwater residence. They generally overwinter in fresh water before outmigrating again in the spring. There is some variability in criteria for defining half-pounders. Kesner and Barnhart (1972) described Klamath River half-pounders as being 250-349 mm. Everest (1973) used 406 mm as the upper limit of half-pounder body length on the Rogue River.

The half-pounder migration has been termed a "false spawning run" because few half-pounders are believed to be sexually mature. However, Everest (1973) found some spawning activity by male half-pounders that were 355-406 mm in length.

Half-pounders are reported in the scientific literature from the Rogue, Klamath, Mad, and Eel River drainages of southern Oregon and northern California (Snyder 1925, Kesner and Barnhart 1972, Everest 1973, Barnhart 1986). Anecdotal accounts suggest that the half-pounder life history may also occur outside of these basins. However, the lack of either a half-pounder fishery outside the Rogue, Klamath, Mad, and Eel Rivers or scientific documentation suggests that if it occurs in other locations, the half-pounder strategy is less successful than in the basins named above and occurs at a much lower frequency."

http://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/publications/techmemos/tm19/lifehist.html

"The half-pounder life history form of steelhead appears to be restricted to southern Oregon and northern California, having been described from the Rogue, Klamath, Eel, and Mad Rivers. The advantages of the half-pounder strategy are poorly understood; presumably, the fish are either seeking refuge from adverse conditions in the ocean or taking advantage of favorable conditions in fresh water. It is likely that expression of this life history strategy is due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors."

"Cape Blanco is also an approximate northern boundary for the Klamath Mountains Province, a local area of intense upwelling, the distribution of the half-pounder life history, and the Klamath-Rogue freshwater zoogeographic zone. To the south, Cape Mendocino is a natural landmark associated with changes in ocean currents and also represents the approximate southern limit of the half-pounder life history strategy."

http://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/publications/techmemos/tm19/hatch.html

[ycflyfisher]

Bubazilla,


Good post on clarifying on what a half-pounder is defined as. If your not familar with the Lower Yuba, it's somewhat of an anomaly in terms of dammed watersheds that lead to the Pacific.

1- It's a fairly short stream at about 25 miles or so.
2- It's fed by a series of two very deep(and very cold) reservoirs.
3- It flows through the mining tailings that were deposited in the valley from all the hydralic mining operations in the upper Yuba watershed prior to the damns being built.

This creates a rather unnatural situation which has caused the lower Yuba to be more "fish freindly" in it's current altered state than prior to those dams being built. The Yuba now offers the fish present, year round thermal refugia(not the case before the dam). The mining tailings also mean that the Yuba is also not subjected to the one way sediment transport with no potential for gravel recuitement because of the dams.

The rather freakish substrate situation with the river literally being surrounded for miles at a stretch by a massive supply of gravel replenishment leaves the fish with a disproportionately high percentage of viable spawning habitat. It also creates a disproportionately high amount of interstital void spaces in the substrate that supports a massive and varied assortment of aquatic biota. What you get in result is a river that features a massive forage base, year round thermal refugia, and high recruitment from all that spawning gravel. The Yuba is not only a river that features a large population of resident fish but bigger than average resident fish to boot.

Anadromy being a survival strategy that was largely spawned on harsh year round, in river conditions simply became largely unnecessary for the fish of the Yuba to maintain population abundance. It's just not happening to any appreciable degree amidst the largely resident rainbow population there. The JSA study conducted back in 1999 or 2000 was illustrative of this. JSA procured the permits necessary to trap fish upmigrating on the Yuba at Daguirre in ordern to procure scale samples and size measurements of all trapped fish. From 1Nov to the end of April of the following year they trapped a grand total of 38 or 39 fish that actually had a saltwater component in their respective life history. None had a half-pounder component. Trapping was not done on a continuous basis but projecting those numbers out we're still talking about less than 200 fish over the course of that period. That is simply not a lot of steelhead.

Yet ask any Norcal flyshop staff their top ten steelhead destinations in Ca, the Yuba is going to show up on those lists almost inclusively. The shops collectively purpetuate the myth that the Yuba is literally a river paved with steelhead(clearly not the case). Add to the fact that the shops also advertise the Yuba as being a river where the fish exhibit the half-pounder component to near Klamath/Rogue frequency. What's the Yuba angler to think when he/she is catching lots more fish over 20" than is typically the case for most resident trout fisheries and the average fish is at the upper end of the typical pounder size range? You can't really blame anglers for never questioning these myths. The Yuba is simply a river that has a large population of very big, but almost exclusively resident fish. The typical size distribution of the fish caught is very similar to that of the Klamath during the height of the pounder run progression. No one really questions the myth, because the parameters that most anglers are concerned with, fit the known profile.

Getting back to the pounder topic( which is my favorite topic if you couldn't tell....) why the half-pounder component occurs is probably the most puzzling question of the entire anadramous picture as far as coastal rainbows are concerned.

Again the pounder component as you stated has only been documented to occur at a significant frequency in a handful of watersheds. Namely, the Klamath and the Rogue(at 90 plus percent) and the Eel and Trinity at a 30 percent clip . If may have also occured naturally in the Mad but there really isn't enough historical data to either confirm or refute this possibility. A biologist I know who has worked on several different watersheds on the west coast, told me he did observe the half-pounder component present in every watershed he's worked on where any significant amount of scale sampling and the corresponding life history analysis was done. But never in double digit frequencies outside the watersheds mentioned. It probably does happen in negligible percentages in most places there's steelhead.

The obvious next question is: WHY does it show in the Life Histories of the fish at 90 plus percent frequency in the Klamath and Rogue basin?

Here's where it gets somewhat crazy..... If you ask a group of say ten biologists a Life History specific question about steelhead there's generally going to be some concensus among the group. Probably with the group agreeing on one or two hypotheses they feel they can support. If you ask them about the half-pounder component, opinions are all over the board. By my experience, there is no concensus regarding this very unique life history trait.

Virtually all of these hypothesis regarding the pounder component in regards to the Klamath and the Rogue, can be shot down to an extent. Of the myriad of theories I've heard on why 90 plus percent ofl the fallrun fish on the mainstem K and the R exhibit the half-pounder component, the following two make the most sense to me. Even so arguements can be made that niether are actually true. (This is gonna get anal so anyone not intune to overanalytical discussions might as well tune out here.....)

theory 1- The fish encounter some kind of adverse, deleterious(or maybe even favorable) condition in the salt, near their natal streams that cause them to turn back early, resulting in a massive half-pounder run and resultingly predominant pounder component expressed in the respective life histories of nearly all the fish. I think the upwelling that you mention belongs in this one.

On the surface, this one makes a lot of sense especially considering the close proximity of the Klamath and Rogue basins. The fish are encountering some condition in the salt that is causing the fish to return prior to sexual maturation, and that condition that does not happen to the same degree in the ocean near other watersheds. Makes sense so far.

Counterarguement: Why is this not happening on the Smith which is roughly midpoint between the Klamath and the Rogue? Outmigration timing comes off at roughy the same time on all three watersheds. The Smith is also not a river which is often blocked by a sandbar for months at a time, so the fish can swim back early if encouraged to do so by conditions in the salt that the K and R fish are also encountering. That counterarguement can be countered(no pun intended) by pointing out that Smith River steelhead are winterrun fish and that the winter runs on the K and the R don't exhibit the pounder component to any great frequency. BUT the fact that the counter to the counterarguement for this hypothesis of the pounder component frequency on the K and the R being caused soley by conditions in the salt is actually counterproductive(pun intended :) ) to the theory. Also, if you subscribe to this theory how do you explain that the fall run fish on the Trinity(a trib to the Klamath) which have nearly identical outmigration(as smolts) and arrival times(as pounders and adults) as mainstem Klamath fish, but only exhibit the pounder component with slightly less than a third the frequency as mainstem Klamath fish and Rogue fallrun fish?

We've just shot holes in this theory( but that's not all the arguements critical of this one, but all that I feel inclined to type out) but it's still the second best theory IMHO, of the myriad of possibilities.

looking elsewhere.....

Theory 2: There's something about the enviromental in river conditions of the Mainstem Klamath and Rogue that is allowing the pounder component to increase population abundance of the fallrun fish in those rivers and thus nearly all those fish are returning as pounders before returning as adults. (For anyone that's hasn't read much dealing with the science of steelhead, I'm not suggesting that the fish make this decision to return early cognitively, it's just the nature of steelhead. The fish express a myriad of life histories and survival strategies and the most sucessful ones become the most common among the population as a whole.)
This theory is the one I like the best.

This theory gets support from one of the facts that was problematic to theory 1: Winter run fish in the Klamath and the Rogue basins are almost exclusively utilizing different spawning habitats and in basin habitats than their fall run brethren. Also helps explain why Klamath fish have a 95 percent pounder frequency but Trinity fallrun fish are going at about a 30 percent clip.

How does this equate? The half-pounder component is a trade-off. It has some obvious benefits, but also some inherent weaknesses. Most noteably:

1- Smaller size at spawning. Since the fish are leaving the salt, they are losing several months of explosive growth in the salt in exchange of negligible freshwater growth for the time they spend inriver as a pounder. Regardless of the rest of the lifehistory of the fish, whether it be a single salt, two salt etc, a fish with a pounder component in it's life history is going to be smaller than it's counterpart with no pounder component.

2- The pounder component gets the sub one salt fish out of the salt(high predation rates) and into freshwater where predation for pounder size fish is very low.

Disadvantages of these two:

Smaller size at spawning leads to lower potential stock recruitement( less eggs per fish) per individual spawner. It also potentailly limits the potential amount of spawning habitat availible to each fish. (Larger fish can blast through larger substrates to expose the smaller spawning gravel that a smaller fishg would not be able to move).

Possible Advantages include:

1- Smaller size at spawning Can increase the amount of spawning substrate availible to the fish because smaller fish can climb higher into high gradient streams that larger fish might not be able to ascend. Two sided sword here.

2- Smaller average size of spawners comes with with the benefit of increased abundance of fish surviving to spawning size via decreased exposure to predation in the salt . Population abundance via sheer numbers.


It's commonly accepted among anglers and biologists that both the Klamath and the Rogue have the largest steelhead runs(abundance wise) of the smallest steelhead(average size wise for corresponding lifehistories) on the planet. I don't think predominant pounder component is a coincidence in this regard, but rather the reason why that's the case. this is the theory I think makes the most sense. It explains and is supported by lots of aspects of the LH's of the fish and most importantly corresponds with the fact that what steelhead do, survival strategy and lifehistory wise is shaped by how they utilize their respective environs.

The only thing I can think of that brings the validity of this theory under question is what happened at the Rogue hatchery. When they were first seeding the Rogue hatchery, they selected only fish that did not exhibit a half-pounder component in their life histories for the first several seasons.
The pounder component nonetheless eventually began to show up again in hatchery fish. This suggests that the half-pounder component is indeed somehow influenced by environmental factors, but probably not the ones that this theory is based on since hatchery fish that return to the hatchery aren't dependant on spawning and developing in river.

Add to the mystery that fish that do have a pounder component in their life history commonly make their pounder migration up a river that is not their natal stream, yet return to their natal stream on spawning migrations. I've never really even heard anyone explain WHY this happens...... and I know that to be a fact, since I've caught ad clipped(not maxillary clipped) pounders on the Klamath miles above it's confluence with the Trinity. Your guess is as good as mine as to what hatchery(rogue or Trinity) these fish came from. They sure as hell weren't from Irongate though.

[Darian]

Hmmmm,.... I guess I didn't make that post as clear as I could've. :? The point was supposed to be that the term has been misused for so long that it no longer means what it was originally intended to.... 8)

This one isn't a lot better.... :? Guess I ll give up at this point. :D

[Tony Buzolich]

Darian,
I'm with you.

YC, that's a TON of information.

I don't know if this was the same count you mentioned but Terry Jackson did say that of the steelhead that were counted on the Yuba more than half of them were clipped hatchery fish. Interesting, in that there are no hatcherys on the Yuba.

Obviously some of the Feather River steelies got side tracted or just preferred the cooler cleaner water of the Yuba.

I'm sure this is the case in many other rivers as well, migrating fish can't for some reason go where they want so they go somewhere else.
No great deduction here.
TONY

[bubzilla]

Interesting stuff, YC. The oceanic upwelling theory is the only theory I've seen advanced in the steelhead literature I have had the opportunity to read. Do you have any links to published materials explaining those other theories?

Just a quick, largely anecdotal, observation regarding the Rogue that does not necessarily jive with what is considered conventional wisdom regarding fish with half-pounder life histories and their relative size at spawning. The Rogue has what appear to be two distinct runs of adult summer steelhead, i.e., an early-arriving run that enters the river in May, June, and July, and a late-arriving run that enters the river in August, September, and October. Although there's disagreement as to whether these are separate races of steelhead, there's not much challenge to the idea there are two groups of adults that enter the river at different times. Some believe that the early-arriving race of summers primarily head for areas above Gold Ray Dam, and then later in the fall there is a late-arriving race of summers that primarily stay below Gold Ray. Of course, others believe that both populations intermingle and share the same spawning habitat. Studies have found that more than 95 percent of the late-arriving fish are said to have a half-pounder life history. It's my understanding that the early-arriving fish do not have as a high an incidence of the half-pounder life history. Here's the rub: the late-arriving fish, which are over 95 percent former half-pounders, are considerably larger--on average--than their early-arriving counterparts that purportedly do not exhibit as high a frequency of half-pounder life history.

One other point in terms of size: many would argue anecdotally that Rogue fish are getting larger, on average, than they have been even in relatively recent years. Some attribute this to changes in ocean conditions and the like, but most believe there is a link between this and the effects of Lost Creek Dam. Whatever the explanation for the increased average size in recent years, most who have fished the Rogue for a long period of time would agree that the late-arriving fish have always been larger, on average, than the early-arriving fish, and continue to be today.

Also, winter run fish on the Rogue do exhibit the half-pounder life history at rates just under 30 percent according to at least one study. I'm not aware of any of the many other rivers that support winter runs in Oregon--which of course are many times more common than summer runs--which have any sort of documented percentage of the half-pounder life history. Again, it may exist and just has not been documented yet, but I have to believe we must surely be getting close to the point where something like that would either have been discovered or the fact that it hasn't suggests that it doesn't exist. Like bigfoot accounts, as more-and-more time passes without hard evidence their credibility diminishes accordingly.

One other point regarding the apparent geographic isolation of the half-pounder life history. The Rogue and the Klamath are really no closer than the Rogue and the Umpqua. The Umpqua, like the Rogue and Klamath, is at least partially dam-regulated today, is not subject to sand bar closure, and has both summer and winter runs. The Umpqua has also been the subject of fairly extensive study both independently and by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for many years at this point. To my knowledge there has not been a discovery of a half-pounder life history in the Umpqua. The only explanation for why seems to fit with the upwelling theory regarding what it is that triggers or supports a half-pounder life history, as the Umpqua enters the Pacific just north of Cape Blanco and its fish turn north rather than south. Otherwise, there are more similarities between the Rogue and Umpqua than there are dissimilarities.

But like you pointed out, there are a lot of holes in every theory regarding steelhead at this point. In many ways, more can't be explained than can. Even so, I think it's safe to say that every small fish isn't necessarily a half-pounder anymore than, as you suggest with the Yuba, every large fish ins't necessarily a steelhead.

Anyway, very interesting stuff. Steelhead are pretty remarkable critters. What makes them tic is fascinating, and I think what makes them such a revered game fish--even more so than their fight or challenge or anything else--is the romance of their travels and the complexity of their lives.

[ycflyfisher]

Tony,

I'm pretty certain that anything Terry mentioned was probably from the recent stuff going on Yuba with the DFG. I'm aware of some of that stuff but can't really comment on that since most of that stuff is still in the draft stages and hasn't really been published for peer review yet.

The Yuba has been plagued with the problem of fish that have origins from the Feather river hatchery entering it after hitting the salt. Most anglers seem to want to equate this as a "straying" problem. It's really a hatchery mismanagement issue as has been explained to me. What's going on here is that the Feather hatchery often has to dump the yearling steelhead into the river prior to them acheiving enough growth to undergo the smoltification process. They do this to make room in the raceways for that seasons Chinook parr. On a year when a large percentage of the yearling fish cannot smolt, they are forced to take refuge in river until they reach a level of growth and maturation where that can happen, and they can outmigrate. When this situation is encountered, a lot of those 'residualizing' fish take refuge in the Yuba instead of the Feather.
When and if they elected to outmigrate they've effectively imprinted on the Yuba(since that's where they developed instream) and return to the Yuba and not the Feather. Thus, it's not really a straying(i.e. homing issue) but rather a hatchery mismanagement issue.

[Tony Buzolich]

YC,

In just the past few weeks the hatchery has dumped smolt at Gridley, Live Oak, the 2nd ST. Ramp in Yuba City, and at Boyd's Pump. Aside from these guys becoming striper candy, do you think dumping them at the 2nd St Ramp is too close to the mouth of the Yuba. From the ramp to the Yuba mouth is less than 300yds and the force of the current from the Yuba pushes against Mosquito Beach which is on the west levee of the Feather. This Yuba water surely must have some imprinting affect on the smolt dumped so close.
TONY

[ycflyfisher]

Bubzilla,

A lot of interesting stuff in your last post. I'm not aware of any published studies that are availible on the web that discusses the half-pounder component being the result of in-river environmental factors. If you want to read about this I'd try to borrow hard copies of the following from one of the guys that work on the Rogue:

By Frank Everest:

Ecology and management of summer steelhead in the Rogue River. Oregon State Game Commission, Fisheries Research Report 7,Project AFS-31, Corvalis. 1973

and


An ecological and fish cultural study of summer steelhead in the Rogue River. 1969

I'm not sure which one of these works actually discusses the evironmental factors because I've never read them. A biologist that I know who is related to Frank, mentioned both of these as references when I was discussing the issue with him. He was also the person who sold me on the idea that there's maybe more going on in river than meets the eye in both the Klamath and Rogue basins(in river) and that the large pounder component frequency may be caused by that as opposed to something going on in the salt.

Again, I'm not at all familiar with the Rogue and it's summer-run, so this is purely speculation on my part. The one thing I do know is that the last remaining, self-sustaining summer-runs that we have here in Ca are drastically different that the typical summer-runs found in OR and WA. All our summer-run fish enter earlier than yours(like tailend of the spring runoff) and leave the mainstems, enter the tributaries and summer over in those tributary environs. They're drastically different in this respect to say the summer fish in either the Umpqua, Rogue, Klickitat etc, that actually summer over in the mainstem of the river and enter the tribs the following fall with the arrival of the first storms.

All our last remaining summer runs occur in the Klamath-Trinity basin with the exception being the MF Eel SR. The thing that is vastly different from the summer steelhead still hanging on in the K-T basin from the fall run fish(that arrive in August-Oct and do exhibit the pounder component to a 95% frequency) is that they're almost all(by my experience) two salt fish and by size comparison, dwarf the fall run Klamath fish which are mostly single salt fish. Lengthwise they're on average about the same size as the Trinity hatchery fish which are also almost exclusively two salt fish.

Are the Rogue's summer run fish(the earlier arriving ones) primarily in the one or two salt size range? If they're primarily in the one salt range say 18-23" and the fall-run Rogue fish are exhibiting primarily mulitsalt life histories, I'd say that probably explains the size difference. The one thing I have noticed is that almost all summering over races of steelhead have nearly homogenus life histories in respect to years in the salt expressed by the population as a whole. Examples include the exclusively one salt Deek Creek natives of the NF Stilly, the two salt fish of the K-T basin and the almost exclusively one native fish of the Washougal. Sadly the predominantly single salt summer runs of the Washougal have effectively been pushed to extirpation since the Skamania hatchery steelhead were selectively bred for multisalt life histories.

Again, I don't know anything about the Rogue but I'm inclined to think that any significant increases in size of the fall run fish on the Rogue may indeed be being influenced by a change in hatchery practices more so than in river changes. Especially if that change came about immediately and the trend has sustained itself over a long period of time. Again, this is a wild ass guess on my part. Strangely we did see an increase in numbers of fish that were caught above the confluence with the Trinity, on the Klamath a few years ago. These fish were huge by Klamath standards (30+ inches) and I'm guessing they were all three salt fish, since the more typical fish in the one and two salt size range did not appear to be bigger than the norm. Not sure why this happened but the trend didn't really continue to perpetuate itself, adn in recent years 10+ pound fish have gone back to being caught very rarely.

What's also strange about the K-T basin is that the average adult is much larger on the T than it is on the K. This is primarily due to the fact that the Klamath fish are exhibiting mainly one salt lifehistories while the two salt life history seems to be the common one on the Trinity. Unfortunately there isn't alot of historical data on the Trinity to compare to, so it really can't be said for certain that a one salt life history was not at one time the predominant ones expressed by the steelhead there.

No one's really traced the hatchery protocols on the Trinity that I'm aware of to see if indeed early on, the fish spawned at the Trinity hatchery were selected on a size/multisalt criteria. The good thing is that on the Klamath, hatchery fish only comprise a percent or two of the entire run, so any characteristics of the hatchery fish(that were created by potential selectivity in the hatchery protocols) haven't really impacted the characteristics of the wild fish via in river spawning interactions to any noticable degree. While on the Trinity where the run is largely comprised of hatchery products, the same probably hasn't held true and those wild fish there, almost certainly have been influenced via spawning interactions with the genetic hatchery disasters.

Clearly the one thing(maybe the only thing) we can be certain of in regards to steelhead, is the point you made: "In many ways, more can't be explained than can. " Excellent and very thought provoking discussion.

[ycflyfisher]

Tony,


I think they've really fixed this potential problem to a large degree. I don't think location of where they're dumping them is really the issue. They like to dump the fish lower in the Feather watershed so the fish tend to spend some time in the river on upmigration as adults rather than blasting right up into the LF.

The issue in the past has been when rather than where they were dumping the fish. In the past they were trucking the fish down and dumping them around Gridley in late Nov to early Dec. This was basically a "cross your fingers and hope we don't get 100,000's of 6-8 inch long fish swimming back into the hatchery 2 days later" approach. That ALWAYS used to happen to some degree. The fishing for adult fish on the Feather is usually pretty good through early December. In the past there were days in late Nov and early December where I quit fishing ten minutes after getting there. The river was so inundated with tiny little hatchery fish that it was damn near impossible to left your flies drift more than a few feet without hooking one of these piddlers. In the last few years they've been lefting them go several months later. This gives the fish several more months of pellet induced growth, so they are mature enough to smolt and outmigrate. When the residualization of massive amounts presmolting fish was occuring, anyone fishing the river knew something was wrong. By my account this hasn't happened in overpowering numbers in the last few years.