Originally Posted by
STEELIES/26c3
Of course, the lack of fish isn't entirely on CDFW as anything can happen (or not happen) in the ocean to take a chunk out of our escapement... but what I do know is that the quota for the Nimbus Hatchery has been slighted by 50% for the last two years. This is most unfortunate because water flows and temps have been more prime between 2016 and 2020 than they have been in the last 25 years prior.
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It's not just the American. The entire West Coast is having a down steelhead year. Along with the poorer than expected salmon runs throughout the West, its pretty obvious that the warmwater blob off the West Coast has negatively affected our salmonid populations.
Originally Posted by
STEELIES/26c3
More fish should be raised and released into our river - which is not capable of hosting a self-sustaining population of natural-origin steelhead - but CDFW is instead cutting the HATCHERY-BASED fishery in half and pretending that gravel restoration is actually going to bring our fishery back.
Nimbus now has TWO FULL nurseries (fingerling-rearing facilities) and enough acreage and the capacity to double its smolt-rearing ponds (races) but they won't do it.
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Its not just as simple as releasing more hatchery fish into the river. Hatchery juveniles can have a significant impact on other salmonids both hatchery and wild. This can be a problem on systems with listed species such as Central Valley Steelhead on the American. I don't know if this is the reasoning for doing this on the American, but it is on other systems in CA. Here's a link to a student's Master thesis on the subject on the Trinity:
http://humboldt-dspace.calstate.edu/...pdf?sequence=3
As a result of this, the Trinity hatchery has greatly reduced its Steelhead production.
Unfortunately, hatchery impacts are much simpler to quantify than impacts due to water management. Again, the fish get the short end of the stick.
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