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"Brood Stock Progam for the Green River"
Over the last few weeks, an important project that we are pursuing is the wild fish capture program on the Green River. The Green River's hatchery steelhead stock has one of the poorest survival rates in the state. Several members of SOF, in cooperation with the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and the WDFW, created a five-year brood stock program to see if we can improve the return of hatchery-reared fish. Each year, we capture wild steelhead by hook and line and carefully transported them via fish tubes to a tank truck for relocation to the Soos Creek Hatchery. In January, the progeny of these wild fish are marked by fin clips (adipose and ventral) identifying them as coming from this project. Many of our double-clipped fish returned as two-salt and three-salt adults this past winter, indicating they possess the genetic vigor to survive and return. To evaluate the effectiveness of this program, it's important to know more about the habits and growth patterns of these fish and the number caught. If you or anyone you know catches a steelhead on the Green with a ventral and adipose clip, please remove a few scales and get them to the Soos Creek Hatchery for analysis. To remove scales take pocketknife to gently scrape around ten scales from each side of the fish mid way between the lateral line and the dorsal fin and place them in an envelope. Please record if it was a right or left ventral clip and length of the fish on the envelope. |
