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[Dave]

Extremely timely bump BNF861 Buck and I just got off the phone about this possible issue and are headed into the upper river tomorrow for a look see of potential problems for future spawning steelhead, which up that far is basically beavers or human induced.
Rain is forecast for this watershed soon and the steelhead catches after that will give a better idea of just how strong the early return is.

Here's hoping.

[swimmingwiththefishes]

Steelhead numbers after this rain I think so far are still lower than last year, and many say that that was not much of a year either.

What do the experienced Vedder people think?  Hatchery cuts effecting returns?

[chris gadsden]

The worse year I have seen personally, another blanked day today and saw no others either. Conditions perfect and nice runs fished. Must be the fish farms causing it.

[Every Day]

The worse year I have seen personally, another blanked day today and saw no others either. Conditions perfect and nice runs fished. Must be the fish farms causing it.

It's not the farms Chris.

It has to have something to do with their life history. I've been meaning to look into it further, but haven't had time. The reason I think it's life history of winters is  because many of the rivers I fish for summer runs had very good or above average returns, not just this year but last year as well. On the flip side, the winter returns have been suffering the last 2 years, very much so this year everywhere.

Add in exceptional coho and pink runs (apparently salmon farms affect the pinks the most according to AM?), and I think any argument around farms is very weak.

What do the experienced Vedder people think?  Hatchery cuts effecting returns?

I'd say it has a bit to do with hatcheries, but mostly it's just whatever is going on in the ocean. Indeed all across the island and mainland I have seen that the hatchery rivers seem more affected than the wild rivers (maybe something to do with releasing "dumb" smolts, which magnifies that whole life history thing that I think might be causing low returns with winter runs). The fact is, I know the people that conduct the swim counts on the island, and every single river they counted so far this year has less than half of the "normal" numbers. Here's hoping there is an extremely good late push (like with the coho), or the winter run steelhead are in big trouble all across the island (and parts of the mainland).

[DRP79]

I posted in another thread in the report section about this.

Im not sure how good a measuring stick Freds derby is but by the end of last January, there were over 150 steelhead weighed in for the derby. This year, to date, with only a few days remaining in the month, there have been just over 60 fish weighed in. I also remember a lot of fisherman complaining of a slow year last year.

Im not sure if derby participation is up or down but thats a pretty drastic drop off.

[BigFisher]

Pathetic year. When I have to resort to the lower end of the river to catch fish you know its bad. Although I did wack a beauty tonight.