http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/sep-pmvs/projects-projets/chilliwack/chilliwack-eng.html
If you click the release database link, it says there were 63,000 pinks released from the Hatchery in 2008, using fish from the Big Qualicum River. So, may be they established themselves from that. It will be decades before they become as abundant as the odd years probably. Hope nobody keep any of them during the even years.
I read that as a 2008 release of fry from eggs gathered from Big Q adults in 2007 and into the Big Q. That river doesn't have much of a pink salmon run afaik. I don't think any ECVI river south of Courtney has much natural pink salmon production.
I'll also mention this: there's a book by Ralph Wahl;
One Man's Steelhead Shangri La. Mostly about a backwater on the Skagit River from which Wahl caught summer and winter steelhead over a period of decades, it also includes a chapter on the sudden appearance of a small run of pinks in that backwater in even numbered years. He tracked it and reported it to fisheries officials who came out & took samples etc. The number of fish was never more than a few dozen but as Wahl says in the book he had never seen pinks there in even numbered years. Within 10 or so years that little run of pinks vanished.
Some would say that Pink years on the Vedder bring out the worst in people.
If they're going to add more pressure they should increase education and enforcement
Inevitable that someone would say that. For some the glass is always half empty though for my part; where would the money to stock even numbered fish come from? Who is accountable if it doesn't work?