The Fishing Report: Hatchery number doesn’t tell whole story

We finally got enough rain to blow out the River. Over five inches fell in the hills above Healdsburg raising the Russian river to just under eight feet for the first time this year. This may be just what the doctor ordered as far as the fish go. The fishermen, many whom have had their way with the fish this year especially in the lower river, will have to wait for the river to clear once again. This will happen up towards Healdsburg by this weekend but for those in the Guerneville area, their days in the sun have passed I am afraid (figuratively and literally). The Russian River Steelhead Season closes to bait fishermen on April 1 and the river will likely not be clear enough down that way before then for anything but bait.
What I find interesting about this Steelhead season on the Russian River is that return numbers for the Coyote facility up in Ukiah are significantly higher than that of the Warm Springs hatchery. To date, the coyote facility has 2385 returnees and the Warms Springs facility only 1866. One fact to consider in assessing why this would happen when The Warm Springs hatchery releases 300,000 smolt compared to only 200,000 smolt by Coyote, is that there was an unprecedented number of fishing days on the lower river this year.  If you were to add up all of the fishing hours below the mouth of Dry Creek vs. the number above, I would have to guess that there would be 30 times the hours put in. The number of hours put in by anglers in the Guerneville area alone is staggering by comparison. But what does that have to do with the return numbers I wondered? So I asked an expert.
Brett Wilson has been a hatchery manager since 1993 for both facilities.  When confronted by my quandary with the return numbers, he had this to say: “First of all” explained Brett, “since ’93 we have had these types of anomalies during the season but by the end of the season everything seems to even out.” Over the course of the next three weeks Warm Springs could get 100 fish a day while Coyote only gets 20-30 fish. The other thing is that Elliot Doss did a tremendous amount of habitat restoration in the channel leading into the hatchery at Warms Springs and that is syphoning off a lot of what would be returning fish. They are Spawning right there before the hatchery entrance. It is a really cool thing to witness” exclaimed Brett. So when I pushed him about the number of angling days in Guerneville and there possible effect on the return he only had this to say.  “Awesome!  If there are that many fish and fishermen down in Guerneville then we are doing our job. I don’t really put that much stock in the returns.  What I care about is whether the anglers are catching fish. We have had our lowest returns during low water years and that coincides with the highest number of fish being caught by the Anglers.  That’s great!”
The bottom line is that the hatcheries get more than enough fish to fill their quota for smolt production. Often they end up releasing excess adult fish into the system to potentially spawn naturally. Remember two more weeks to use bait then it is all artificial. We haven’t seen the typical run of “Blue Backs” yet so they may still be on the way.
For more information and/ or first person fishing reports, please contact Hunt Conrad at Prospect Mortgage, 431-9715.