The Department of Fish and Wildlife will no longer release hatchery steelhead in the Grays River to help preserve the wild steelhead population near the mouth of the Columbia River.
That may increase fishing pressure elsewhere, as anglers won’t be allowed to keep any steelhead they hook in the Grays.
The Chinook River, which flows into the Columbia 15 miles farther downstream, also will be off-limits to the release of hatchery steelhead now that WDFW has designated the Grays/Chinook wild steelhead population the state’s newest wild fish gene bank.
That designation, announced Wednesday, is part of a statewide policy to protect self-sustaining populations of wild steelhead by reducing the risk to them posed by hatchery fish, Cindy Le Fleur, WDFW regional fish manager, said in a news release.
“This is the last of four gene banks currently planned for wild steelhead in the lower Columbia River Basin,” Le Fleur said. “The department remains committed to producing hatchery fish for harvest, but we also need to protect wild steelhead against interbreeding, disease, and competition from hatchery fish.”
Since 2014, the department has also established wild steelhead gene banks on the East Fork Lewis River, the Wind River and the North Fork Toutle/Green River. Picking the North Fork Toutle/Green over the Coweeman River drew opposition from anglers, too.
WDFW first identified wild steelhead gene banks as a recovery strategy in the Statewide Steelhead Management Plan, adopted by the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission in 2008.
In 2015, a 16-member citizen work group advised against siting a gene bank on the Elochoman River and Skamokawa Creek, but didn’t reach a consensus on a final option for that area. However, about 85 percent of the comments later received from the public supported the Grays/Chinook option, Le Fleur said.
Le Fleur said WDFW’s decision on where to established a gene bank near the mouth of the Columbia River came down to a choice between the Grays/Chinook rivers, or an area including Mill, Abernathy and Germany creeks, which are several miles west of Longview.
“Those rivers have a number of advantages over the three streams, including a higher abundance of wild steelhead and more spawning habitat,” she said.
However, the Grays also provides far more fishing opportunity than Mill/Abernathy/Germany. In 2010-11, anglers reported catching 705 winter steelhead on the Grays River, more than double the 310 caught in Mill/Abernathy/Germany. And the Grays is more of a draw for anglers coming from outside the area, according to fishermen who attended a January meeting about the process in Cathlamet.
At that meeting, anglers also predicted that making the Grays a gene bank would shift fishing to the already crowded Naselle River.
In recent years, WDFW has raised an average of 140,000 winter steelhead smolts at the Grays River Hatchery from broodstock collected at Beaver Creek on the Elochoman River. About 40,000 of those smolts were released into the Grays River, while the rest were transported to the Elochoman and Coweeman rivers for release.
This year, however, the number of steelhead smolts raised at the Grays River Hatchery was severely reduced by the effects of last summer’s drought. Le Fleur said 130,000 juvenile steelhead died last July as a result of high water temperatures, low water levels and Ichthyophthirus, the deadly fish disease known as “ich.”
In mid-March, the 10,000 smolts that survived will be transported to the Elochoman River, where they will be acclimated then released in mid-April, Le Fleur said.
“Survival rates at some other hatcheries in the region were actually higher than expected, which help to offset the losses at Grays River,” she said. “Even so, total production for the area is about 80 percent of the goal, and we plan to reduce our releases by an average of 20 percent at six sites this spring.”
Those sites include the Washougal, Elochoman, Coweeman and Kalama rivers, as well as Salmon Creek and Rock Creek.
Despite the gene bank designation, hatchery managers plan to continue producing 140,000 winter steelhead smolts per year at the Grays River Hatchery — for the time being — or at the Beaver Creek facility. WDFW will also continue to produce coho and chum salmon at Grays River until it closes.
WDFW plans to close the Grays River hatchery because sediment in the river chronically clogs the outfall, though the agency hasn’t announced a date for the closure.
