What’s Going on at Reiter Ponds

speedbird

speedbird

Life of the Party
What’s going on here? Has the broodstock experiment failed this badly? The last 4 years have had poor returns for sure, but at least some fish consistently returned to that hatchery. Has the switch to broodstock fish just delayed the run timing? 0 Reiter ponds stock at Christmas time is insanity. If this is the future of Puget sound hatchery steelhead returns, what’s the purpose of spending so much on them?

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Broodstock is only happening for the summer runs using South fork naturalized, skamania origin fish. Winters are still chambers creek fish I thought?

Heard a rumor (with no evidence to back it up) that they are planning on shuttering Reiter and moving production to the Wallace.

The ponds haven't been used in 2+ years now.
 
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the_chemist said:
Broodstock is only happening for the summer runs using South fork naturalized, skamania origon fish. Winters are still chambers creek fish I thought?

Heard a rumor (with no evidence to back it up) that they are planning on shuttering Reiter and moving production to the Wallace.

The ponds have haven't been used in 2+ years now.
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It would be sad to see Reiter disappear because that stretch of river is far prettier, and far more what you think of when you think of Steelhead fishing. But it wouldn‘t be surprising. Why spend money keeping a hatchery open that gets almost no fish back, when you can consolidate the remanent steelhead production at the successful salmon hatchery
 
the_chemist said:
Broodstock is only happening for the summer runs using South fork naturalized, skamania origon fish. Winters are still chambers creek fish I thought?

Heard a rumor (with no evidence to back it up) that they are planning on shuttering Reiter and moving production to the Wallace.

The ponds have haven't been used in 2+ years now.
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On my only trip to Reiter this past summer , i passed the east end of the ponds as a crew from the Wallace hatchery were cleaning the northern most pond. I had a nice chat with a long time employee from the wallace hatchery. The next thing i knew the river was closed. Dont know if they filled that pond.
 
CRO said:
On my only trip to Reiter this past summer , i passed the east end of the ponds as a crew from the Wallace hatchery were cleaning the northern most pond. I had a nice chat with a long time employee from the wallace hatchery. The next thing i knew the river was closed. Dont know if they filled that pond.
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It wasn't filled as of November.
 
I think what you are seeing at Reiter is the result of changing hatchery practices and a resizing of the Reiter steelhead program.

When Reiter was built, early 1970s with first releases in 1974 (if memory serves) the ponds were designed to raise 200,000 to 250,000 fish each. One pond was for summer fish and the other for early timed wingers. To produce the highest quality smolts at the time of release it was important the fish would be of the same approximate size as they were released in the ponds. With large programs across the Puget Sound region and fish transferred between stations getting a 1/4 million fish at the same time. With the ending of inter-basin transfers and smaller programs and smaller programs I would think produce consistent high quality smolts (meeting target size and condition) is much more difficult. Suspect bring the additional collection of brood stock at Wallace probably played a role as well.

In short, those ponds no longer fit the rearing needs for that production facility. A re-design in the future?

Curt
 
Such complete bull shit what is happening to the Sky, and all of Washington really.

Historically there was never that many summer runs, about how many there are now from what I've read. The plan to us in-basin stock to provide so little opertunity is a waist of money.
How many years will it take to build up a run from 40-50 fish being used? Really looking forward to looking for those 25 fish returning, but I guess only have to search from the Wallace down, if the river is even open!

Bring back the 250,000 plants of those large agressive Skamainia summer runs please, and truck them over the falls too!

Sure was fun beck in the day, been just 20 yrs since they changed the hatchery practices in 2003.

Amazing how fast things went to shit.
 
_WW_ said:
Two more rivers that have just become urban ditches.
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While it’s hard to argue against the fact that both the Sky and Stilly have seen better, more productive days, I still think your assessment is a bit harsh. Compared to so, so many other rivers, there’s still a lot to love about the Skykomish and Stillaguamish. Any system that can still support any number of bull trout including anadromous bull trout (not to mention all sorts of other cool critters) has at least something going for it, water quality and habitat wise, worth saving and trying to enhance. In my opinion anyway. Y’all should see some urban ditches…
 
It’s not just the sky and stilly. Steelhead returns are hurting all over from northern BC to California. Both wild and hatchery stocks are surviving poorly. Something bigger is afoot be it climate change or the food chain in the northern pacific. I would love to see both wild and hatchery fish provide fisheries they once did. But for now I’m glad I had the chance to fish them when I did.
 
It was quite the shock when I moved up to BC 10 years ago expecting to chase summers and finding out they weren't clogging every system and Winters weren't much better. Definitely spoiled growing up with the old wdfw steelhead program.

Also very sad to see how quickly it deteriorated. I would say the last "good year" on the sky for me was 2015. Seems like it's been a grind just to hook up a couple fish since then. Definitely the end of an Era if Reiter does close. My first steelhead was a Reiter summer 30 years ago. 20230709_055357.jpg
 
I'm glad I fished my ass off for those hatchery steelhead back in the day. I came along well after the glory days, however, I, along with many others got to partake in some good fishing, and got to witness first hand the complete collapse of a steelhead empire. The fish were amazing, relatively plentiful, and some of the guys that pursued them were absolute magicians with graphite. Time marches on and things change.
 
Once walked into Reiter down river with my centerpin and had bobber down, and driving back home within the same hour. Most beautiful water by far. I still have yet to visit the sky after moving back home a couple years ago.
 
In my lifetime and as best I can remember the Reiter winter counts have always been low at this point in the season, even on years when Reiter ends up getting a few hundred winter runs back to the facility. I never cared much for fishing at Reiter and preferred the tribs. When WDFW stopped out-planting winter runs that opportunity went away for me.

The summer fishing held up well for me until they reduced from the 190K they used to plant. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they ever (since the millennium at least) hit 250K summers in the Sky alone. I thought that was the total for the entire Snohomish system (Sky, Snoqualmie, etc). I think there could still be decent summer fishing on the Sky if they hit the 116K goal, particularly if survival improves. That said, I haven't fished the Sky for summers in a few years so I can't comment on how the fishing has been. Closures in 2023 and years of sub 100K plants prior to that have had me looking to other opportunities.
 
SeaRunner said:
In my lifetime and as best I can remember the Reiter winter counts have always been low at this point in the season, even on years when Reiter ends up getting a few hundred winter runs back to the facility. I never cared much for fishing at Reiter and preferred the tribs. When WDFW stopped out-planting winter runs that opportunity went away for me.

The summer fishing held up well for me until they reduced from the 190K they used to plant. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they ever (since the millennium at least) hit 250K summers in the Sky alone. I thought that was the total for the entire Snohomish system (Sky, Snoqualmie, etc). I think there could still be decent summer fishing on the Sky if they hit the 116K goal, particularly if survival improves. That said, I haven't fished the Sky for summers in a few years so I can't comment on how the fishing has been. Closures in 2023 and years of sub 100K plants prior to that have had me looking to other opportunities.
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One is more likely to find a wild summer run than a hatchery fish any more on the Sky. But I doubt we'll get to fish for them any more!
 
In hindsight what once was steelhead fishing in the Snohomish basin border on the unbelievably if you were not there. In the mid-1980s during the months of December, January and February the recreational effort was as much as 60,000 angler trips. The hatchery catch peaked in the winter of 1984/1985 where the tribes and the recreational fisheries combined to harvested just under 22,000 hatchery fish. While the number of wild fish harvested was typically limited there was a spring CnR season in March and first half of April that was special. IN spite of all that effort and high abundance of hatchery fish the average wild escapements were roughly 110% of the 6,500 goal.

However true to the nature of steelhead fishers everywhere there was a lot of bitching about the fish/fishing was mismanaged and if the managers would just listen to the anglers things would be so much better!

Curt
 
Another reason to join CCA and support Hatchery Wild Co Exist. According to some of the guys at Snohomish/Skykomish facebook page they are cleaning Reiter and reorganizing with the Wallace hatchery (Wallace hatchery doing much better job lately in my opinion) on winter steelhead rearing. Makes sense since the Wallace hatchery crew is the one supporting the chum rearing effort to try and bring back the chum run thanks to the dept. of fisheries for wiping them out.
just remember its the WFC that’s got a strangle hold on the WDFW to only rear a tiny fraction of the fish they could actually raise. I bet those Wallace boys could raise a shit ton of fish if they were given the green light. Heck look at the returns they get at tokul creek. Better than reiter or the stilly.
i say tell the wfc to go pound sand and let’s get back to planting fish again and yes I know the returns are not what they used to be and I Don’t care.
 
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