Juvenile steelhead escape Lyons Ferry

Officials from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said Thursday that nearly 250,000 juvenile steelhead escaped from Lyons Ferry Fish Hatchery on the Snake River near Starbuck, a loss that will affect future fishing on the Grande Ronde and Touchet rivers.

But the impact is not expected to be lasting and many of the AWOL fish may survive, potentially improving fishing near the hatchery when the now smolts return to the Snake River as adults in the fall of 2023 and spring of 2024.

Still, the normal release of about 225,000 juvenile steelhead into the Cottonwood Creek Acclimation Pond on the Grande Ronde River just upstream from Bogans Oasis will be short by about 90,000 fish and no smolts will be released in the Touchet River near Dayton. Anglers in those areas will notice a difference, said Chris Donley, fish program manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife at Spokane.

“This is really just one more death by 1,000 cuts for recreational steelhead fishing,” he said, referring to what has been a string of poor steelhead runs in the Snake and Columbia rivers. “Poor ocean survival and now we have this loss — I want to make sure people have their expectations set properly for the fall of 2023.”

The loss amounts to 64% of the hatchery’s Wallowa stock of steelhead that are released in the Grande Ronde basin but just 8% of hatchery releases in the Snake River basin. Other steelhead stocks raised at the hatchery, such as those endemic to the Tucannon River, were not affected.

Anglers on the Touchet River will suffer the most with no adults expected to return in 2023. Those who fish the Grande Ronde River will feel it, but not as much. Donley said the 135,200 smolts that didn’t escape were moved to the Cottonwood Creek acclimation site where they will be released this spring. In addition, he said Oregon operates a robust hatchery steelhead program on the river. He predicted anglers on the Grande Ronde won’t notice much of a difference in the fall of 2023 but those who like to fish the spring season will have fewer fish to catch in 2024.

“In the fall on the Grande Ronde, 90% of the fish you encounter are destined for Oregon,” he said. “The bulk of the Cottonwood release fish really hang up down in the mainstem Snake from about Lower Granite Dam to Couse Creek and then they show up in the Grande Ronde in February and March. So that fishery right around Cottonwood Creek is where they will notice it the most.”

He said releasing 135,000 fish from Cottonwood Creek should easily produce enough of an adult return to satisfy hatchery spawning needs in 2024.

“Long term, we will be fine,” he said, noting that if there is a shortfall, the state has a backfill agreement with Oregon.

The young fish appeared to have squeezed through an inch-and-a-half wide gap caused by a faulty rubber gasket at the bottom of a rearing pond at the hatchery. Donley said they don’t know when the fish escaped. If it happened early last fall when the fish were placed in the pond and were still quite small, there was likely a high predation impact by nonnative predators like walleye and smallmouth bass. But if the fish escaped as the pond was being lowered last week, the fish — larger from an extra four months of growth — will have a better chance of surviving.

Donley said there is some reason to believe the fish escaped only recently.

“Unfortunately, there is no way to confirm that,” he said.

The smolts were marked as hatchery fish by having their adipose fins removed. But hatchery workers had not yet implanted a subset of the fish with tags that enable their movements to be tracked as they pass dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers.

Donley said a thin piece of rubber that is part of a rotating screen system that sits about 6 feet under water failed. The gasket was replaced in August as part of routine maintenance and had never failed in the past.

“I don’t believe this was a staff failure,” said Donley. “This was an equipment failure.”

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273. Follow him on Twitter @ezebarker.