MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT
INFORMATION NOTE
Date: December 6, 2007
File:
CLIFF/tracking #: 96120
I. PREPARED FOR: Joan Hesketh, Deputy Minister of Environment
II. ISSUE: Cowichan River hatchery steelhead program
III. BACKGROUND:
* In co-operation with the Freshwater Fisheries Society and its
predecessor the Fish Culture Section of Ministry of Environment (MoE),
regional staff of MoE have been managing a steelhead smolt production
program for the Cowichan River since the early 1980s. The objective of
the program has always been to produce a supply of harvestable steelhead
on one of the region's most popular rivers. Approximately 50,000
steelhead smolts have been released annually. Survival to adult and
return to the Cowichan River has been consistently far below
expectation. This is thought to be related to impairment of the
auto-immune system of smolts reared on the constant water temperature
regime of the groundwater supplied hatchery. In theory the supply of
returning hatchery origin adults resulting from smolt releases of the
magnitude involved should have been sufficient to equal the supply of
wild fish. In practice, wild fish have consistently dominated the
catch. Many veteran Cowichan River anglers fish for an entire season
without encountering a hatchery steelhead. Creel survey data from the
2006/07 season revealed 107 hatchery steelhead caught (10% of total
steelhead catch) of which only about 20 were harvested. The return on
the investment in the hatchery steelhead program is exceedingly low thus
emphasizing the need to address alternative uses of limited hatchery
capacity.
1 Two other issues are central to optimal use of hatchery
capacity:
* One is the MoE mandate to increase angling license sales by 30%
in ten years.
1 The other is recent private land forest company policy to
restrict public access to lands containing numerous stocked and
unstocked lakes.
* Access restrictions have been addressed by re-directing stocking
to lakes closer to urban centers. However, sustaining angling
opportunity in those lakes and augmenting license sales depends heavily
on the supply of catchable size fish available for stocking.
IV. DISCUSSION:
The hatchery space and resources presently allocated to Cowichan
steelhead smolt production results in a catch of about 100 adult
steelhead or about 10% of the total steelhead catch in that river. The
same space and resources, if dedicated to a catchable trout program,
would result in 20,000 fish available for anglers. These fish would be
released in ten or more lakes and 80% or more of them would be caught
and harvested. The supply of hatchery steelhead adults in the Cowichan
River does little, if anything, to contribute to angling license sales
or the number of anglers or angler days sustained. In contrast
catchable trout programs have a proven track record of inviting
significant increases in angler participation.
V. MINISTRY POSITION:
Reallocate space presently dedicated to Cowichan steelhead smolt
production to augmenting the supply of catchable size trout available
for distribution to select readily accessible lakes close to major urban
centers on southern Vancouver Island. The influence of this decision on
the level of angling activity and catch success on the Cowichan River is
likely to be minor, if even detectable. Hatchery steelhead will
continue to be present until 2011. The increment to the regional lake
stocking program will be available by 2009 and is certain to be
significant.