Thread: Salmon

Originally Posted by Joe Schmo

Super true on the density issue of H vs W sore head

I reckon the other side of the coin is that hatchery fish have been packed into a raceway and only know... "food" "pellet" movement above..."food" "pellet" so they ain't exactly street smart
However wild fish are dodging and weaving and hunting from the day they're born so they're tough...however they're also usually smaller.
There's a gigantic (several million tagged) study that looks at whether it's better to transport fish to the ocean (estuary), thus avoiding predation, or let them travel in the river and tough it out and learn and have the weak ones picked off...turns out yes it's better for overall smolt survival to transport em and yes run of the river fish survive better to adults. Classic Catch22, laterally depends on what time (day) of year they are transported, river flow, etc.

To get back to the subject...I can't imagine catching a chinook 100m from the salt as y'all do here!! They're BEAUTIFUL!!!

You could be right. From memory the salmon smolt I saw released were quite small, 2 inches in length. All were about that size give or take