Saturday, May. 31, 2008

Changes in store for rearing Wenatchee steelhead

By The Associated Press

WENATCHEE -- Changes are coming in the way endangered steelhead trout are raised in the upper Columbia River region.

The aim is to increase the numbers in the Wenatchee River, where a steelhead fishing season opened last fall for the first time in a decade.

Starting in 2013, the Chelan County PUD and state Department of Fish and Wildlife plan to stop rearing steelhead in the Columbia River and instead raise them in the Wenatchee River at Leavenworth and in the Chiwawa River, a tributary that meets the Wenatchee River near Plain.

As it is, scientists and local sportsmen and conservationists say thousands of steelhead released in the upper reaches of the Wenatchee River every spring ignore the Wenatchee upon returning from the ocean.

Instead, they pass the mouth of the Wenatchee and continue up the Columbia, for the most part dropping off the radar of those trying to track the population.

Just how many steelhead skip the Wenatchee is uncertain.

A PUD fisheries expert said the figure is "more than 25 percent."

Bob Stroup, a founder of the Icicle Valley Chapter of Trout Unlimited, said the bypass rate is between 50 and 75 percent.

Figures are fuzzy, but the two agreed that significant numbers of steelhead are not bonding with the Wenatchee River as intended.

The time the fish spend in the Wenatchee apparently isn't enough for the fish to set their homing beacons for the Wenatchee River.

Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated 2,649 steelhead returned to the Wenatchee River, but that count is done at Priest Rapids Dam on the Columbia River near Mattawa, about 50 miles downstream from the confluence of the Wenatchee River and the Columbia River, making the estimate less reliable.