Colville Tribe restores stock of summer Chinook salmon

As each salmon was caught, it was scanned with a yellow T-bar scanner to detect a coded wire tag (CWT) inserted into the snout of every hatchery fish. Each fish was then slipped into a rubber transport boot and quickly handed off to a tank tender who dumped the fish into a truck mounted transport tank.

“As of today,” said hatchery manager Matthew McDaniel on Friday, July 31, “we’re close to our broodstock goals with about 200 more adults needed to complete our broodstock needs (approximately 100 each of wild and hatchery).”

Fisheries staff selectively harvest wild and hatchery-origin broodstock from the Columbia and Okanogan rivers with a fishing boat named the Dream Catcher that employs a vertical seine net equipped with weights on one edge and floats on the opposite edge.

A live-capture weir is also used in the Okanogan River to catch Chinook stocks. Wild salmon are released and excess hatchery salmon including sockeye are distributed among tribal members for subsistence and ceremonial uses. Weirs fashioned from wood were a traditional method used by tribal members to catch salmon. Today the same method is still used but the constructions materials are metal and PVC pipe/

"Studies have shown that too many hatchery fish on the spawning grounds are a competitive and genetic risk to wild spawners,” said Casey Baldwin, Colville Tribes Fish and Wildlife senior research scientist. “Removing excess hatchery fish is critical to the long-term viability of the population."

The CCT Anadromous Fish Division provides ceremonial and subsistence fisheries for the tribal membership. An anadromous fish like a salmon or steelhead is defined as one that is born in fresh water, spends most of its live in the ocean and returns to fresh water to spawn.

The 2019 CJH production plan included goal of planting 1.1 million wild summer Chinook in the Okanogan river system. From mid-May to June 2020, 300,000 sub-yearling fish were released in the river at Omak. In mid-April 2021, another 800,000 yearling salmon will be released, 400,00 in both the Similkameen and Okanogan rivers.