Quote Originally Posted by Brian Clemens View Post


YC,
Here are my opinions on the "data" that was posted in the previous post. They have been spending millions upon millions of dollars since summer 2004, let's call it 15yrs at an estimated 8-15 million per project, that's 120 to 225 Million, let's just take the bottom end of that and say 120 Million dollars spent on these projects that havent had any significant increase in anything(I'll explain) , except juvenile "estimates", which is great if we are seeing those numbers of juvenile fish. Steelhead are 2 year return fish, salmon 2 to 5yr return fish. What those charts tell me if you truly study them is their work is 50/50 at best, flip a coin. Nothing has truly changed for the better. We are not seeing more fish returns even if it's just a small noticable increase, but there are no increases. What we are seeing is the destruction and shallowing of a river what once was a beautiful designated wild and scenic river. Really study those charts carefully. The spring run salmon has not increased if anything it has decreased since previous years, you can also see that its cyclic, like all anadramous fish. Those numbers are up and down, but way more spring run before trrp than now, the true wild salmon of the trinity. I'd have to say the same thing for fall salmon as well. Not a big change at all. As for steelhead, you cant count the mid 2000s when we had those huge unnatural numbers. The hatchery produce more steelhead than they were supposed to and released them. But you can see what happened, they returned in great numbers and we were all happy. Those numbers had nothing to do with trrp. So then you wonder, if more fish are being created by these projects we should be seeing more in return. So back to steelhead, if you take those big fish years out of the equation then again nothing has changed. If you truly have 5.4 million juvenile fish exiting this river system healthy and ready to go, it doesnt matter what river it is you are going to see a huge return of fish compared to pre-trrp numbers. Just like the mid 2000s with the return of the hatchery created steelhead. Lots of money being spent on returns that are lack luster.
Brian,

Thanks for the response but you didn't answer the question, so I'll ask it again:

Let's assume you're correct, and to some degree the river is as FUBAR'd as you seem to believe that it is. How do you reconcile the fish response; specifically the stream-born Chinook response Fishtopher asked you about in post #30? How specifically would you presume to get such a huge jump in production if the project is making conditions less favorable to the fish? This would pertain to the graphic on the left which as Fishtopher pointed out is not linked to the uncertainty of marine survival but draws a direct correlation to the productivity of inland habitat.