To clip or not to clip

[Klob]

Had lunch with a group today, and one of them happened to be a DFO biologist. I mentioned how well the Coho fishing has been this year on the inside but was upset that you can only retain clipped fish and had to go through quite a few unclipped before you could find one. Well according to her all hatchery fish are clipped, so if you catch one with the adipose it has to be wild. Everything I've ever heard is that only a percentage of hatchery's get clipped, even from the volunteers at the hatcheries. As of yet I have not heard where all these Coho are from and that maybe the American hatcheries have helped. "All of the American fish go down the outside" was the response. I could feel my BP start to peak so I left it at that.

Question: Does anyone have first hand knowledge of clipping Coho's. And do all American fish really go down the outside.

 

[GDW]

Total ignorance by the sounds of it to me. I can only speak to the hatchery in Sooke who puts on a VOLUNTEER fin clipping weekend each year. The % of fish that get clipped depends on the number of volunteers if nobody came out and gave their time I bet it would be a tiny % of fish that get clipped.

 

[Deewar25]

Perhaps referred to all AMERICAN fish clipped? Canada I believe is all volunteer and as said, depends on how many we get out...I have pushed hard to get as many as possible out for the SSE clipping - we clipped 35k this year with a large crew over a weekend, overall they released 110k - so that alone is 75k unclipped that we would have to return when caught. I'll have a talk with them sometime and see if we can do an even better job there and get those numbers even higher over several weekends, but the forum gang would have to be willing to chip in to make that happen.

No question its frustrating knowing you could be releasing a nice unclipped hatchery and shame on the uninformed biologist you were talking to for not having the facts straight!

 

[Bear]

Fish with a nose tag are clipped,clipped fish must be nose tagged.A small percentage of hatchery stock are clipped and nose tagged.This is the result of agreements between some U.S. states and Canada.

 

[Rockfish]

Klob -- your DFO biologist is just plain wrong, at least as it relates to our Canadian hatcheries. I have helped clip a lot of Coho over the years and many of our Hatchery Coho are not clipped and very few hatchery Chinook are clipped.

Bear -- have helped clip ten's of thousands of Coho and none of them had nose tags. Putting in those tags is very expensive, as is processing them. DFO seems to need a very good reason to go to that expense.

 

[Bear]

Maybe you could explain why they have a "head recovery" programn if clipped fish do not have nose tags? There would be no information gained and a total waste of money. Could it be that DFO is playing games with anglers?

 

[Rockfish]

Maybe you could explain why they have a "head recovery" programn if clipped fish do not have nose tags? There would be no information gained and a total waste of money. Could it be that DFO is playing games with anglers?

In most cases there is no money wasted as volunteer anglers clip them for free. The reason is that it allows for a small retention sport fishery which otherwise would not exist, at least in JDF where unlike some areas we are not currently allowed to keep them if they are not clipped.

As for the head recovery program I assume it is to recover the small number of salmon heads that actually have nose tags. I would think most Coho heads turned in are discarded and I don't know if they are even scanned as most if not all would not have tags.

 

[Cuba Libre]

Salmon Sport Head Recovery Program & Coded Wire Tag

Salmon Sport Head Recovery Depots

SHRP logoThe sport fishing community has an important role in the recovery of coded-wire tags found in Coho and Chinook.

Coded-wire tags allow Canada to fulfill obligations for International Pacific Salmon Treaty initiatives and provide valuable information, including:

abundance, distribution and survival;
trends for planning next year’s fishing season;
run timing in salt and freshwater areas.

Anglers can recognize the presence of a coded-wire tag because of the missing adipose fin (located on the dorsal surface of the salmon). If you have caught an adipose fin clipped Coho and Chinook, it is a simple matter of removing the head from the fish, completing a sport head label (available at a Sport Head Recovery Depot) and then submitting the head to a depot in the area. By participating in the Salmon Head Recovery Program, you will be contributing necessary information to allow for continued sport fishing opportunities. You will also be entered into the Sport Head Recovery Prize Draw which takes place annually.

Certain hatchery stocks are used to indicate the health of other stocks in the area. Tag recoveries not only help to indicate that stocks are healthy, but also that stocks of concern could be improving.

For several years, hatcheries located in the South Coast have been removing the adipose fin from all coho salmon. This marking of coho makes it possible for anglers to distinguish hatchery coho and provides opportunities for “hatchery only” coho fishing in southern B.C.

In addition to marking hatchery salmon, a very small number of wild coho and chinook (less then 5%) are also tagged and adipose clipped to help biologists monitor habitat enhancement projects associated with wild salmon stocks.

For these reasons, all heads from adipose fin clipped Coho and Chinook turned in by anglers become critical to the management of fish stocks in B.C. even if they do not contain a coded-wire tag.

It is just as important to turn in heads from terminal or freshwater sites as it is from marine areas. Even though anglers fishing close to hatcheries can be fairly certain of the origin of their catch, data will not be recorded unless the heads from fin-clipped recoveries are turned in. Without the data, the health of the stock and the value of the resource to anglers could be underestimated.

By participating in the Salmon Sport Head Recovery Program, you will be entered into the Prize Draw which takes place annually.

To contact the Salmon Sport Head Recovery Program call 1-866-483-9994 (toll free).

Get the part about international obligations?????

 

[GLG]

I think there was a policy that all hatchery fish are to be clipped.
No one follows that policy as it puts too much pressure on local hatchery's.
To understand why lets take this as an example.
It's not uncommon to do a Coho egg take of lets say 50K. (25 pair)
You don't need much water to grow them to 2 grams but those things grow.
At 4 grams they are too small to clip and most small hatcheries can't hold that many.
You start over crowding them and they get sick and die.
To prevent that you start releasing them into your river system.
To get the fish to a point that you can clip them you need them to be 10 grams or more.
You might only be able to have 25K fish onsite when they are 10 grams.
To get the fish to smolt size you might be down to 10 to 15K or less onsite.
Another thing is how much work does it take to clip?
I have found that doing 8K clips per day is asking a lot from volunteers.
Sure you can get that done but try doing that year after year and you will see less people come out to help.
The hatchery I'm involved with clip 20 to 30K coho each year. (some years even more)
Not sure we can continue at that level and it's one of the reasons why we support a rule change of 1 wild 1 hatch coho for the SoG.
We would like to move to clipping 25% of our hatchery fish, as I feel that the data at that level is still valid.
ie... for every 25 clipped adults retuning would mean 100 hatchery fish.

The long term plan would to stop clipping and shut down the hatchery.
The only way to do that will be to have the wild population meeting the numbers for the river.
For our river that is around 1K adults and we are a long way from that so we are still open.

As for the Coho we are seeing this year.... I have heard they are mostly Canadian fish.
Mainland SoG rivers, ECVI rivers and Fraser river with some American fish also.
I have also heard that the Fraser Coho, the one that we have the restrictions for, may be a good run.
One can only hope that is the case.....

The big question is why is the Coho run this year so good?
I sure was not expecting it.....

 

[Deewar25]

you say they need to be 10 grams or more to clip? You all have big fingers up there or what? Down here, they clip them between 3 and 4 grams.

 

[GLG]

you say they need to be 10 grams or more to clip? You all have big fingers up there or what? Down here, they clip them between 3 and 4 grams.

No big fingers just 65 + year old eyes.... LOL
It's funny watching these old farts clip.....
And a good time is had by all....

 

[Deewar25]

must be something in the water up there then as the old farts at SSE clip circles around us 'young pups'....lol

 

[Klob]

Thanks to anyone one who volunteers at our hatcheries. If anyone knows how I can get a hold of them @ the Englishman please let me know. What concerns me is we have an over educated, overpaid biologist at DFO that actually believes the dogma. These people have a huge role in what happens to our fishery yet don't even know the facts. I guess I just expect too much from these people.

 

[GLG]

Klob.... page 16,17,18 look for Dave Davies (DFO) section he is your Community Adviser
http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/sep-pmvs/advisors-conseillers/directory-répertoire_09-10-eng.pdf

 

[Peahead]

Maybe you could explain why they have a "head recovery" programn if clipped fish do not have nose tags? There would be no information gained and a total waste of money. Could it be that DFO is playing games with anglers?

Coho and Chinook are adipose clipped for at least two reasons. 1) to allow for a fishery with hatchery retention for those that are hatchery clipped 2) for head recovery data of those clipped fish that may also have a coded wire tag inserted in their head.

My last head returned data from DFO reports that for every 10 adipose clipped coho returned to them, there is approx only 1 that also has a coded wire tag. Without the wire code data however, it would be difficult to say where the coho in this statistic originated

DFO wants everyone to return heads of hatchery adipose clipped coho ( even if 90% of them don't have wire coded tags ) because they want to recover the data from the coded tags of the 10% that have tags and also keep statistics on how many have no tags.

My understanding also from DFO head recovery data is that for every 10 hatchery chinook heads turned in to them each year I think it reported about 3-4 have coded wire tags. I suspect that number would be higher if none of those were USA chinook This is becasuse USA adipose clips a much higher percentage of their hatchery chinook than BC does (somewhat like our coho here in BC, the chinook in US are also adipose clipped for retention opportunity fisheries as well )

 

[Whole in the Water]

We need to get a portable fin clipping machine like they have in Wash. state to clip ALL our salmon. Just need to raise some $ to buy or maybe rent one.

http://wdfw.wa.gov/hatcheries/overview.html


One major milestone was the mass marking of virtually all hatchery coho and Chinook salmon released from state hatcheries. Using automatic fin-clipping machines, state hatchery crews mark more than 100-million fish each year for release from state and tribal hatcheries, allowing for easy identification of hatchery salmon on the fishing grounds

 

[blackvelvet]

We need to get a portable fin clipping machine like they have in Wash. state to clip ALL our salmon. Just need to raise some $ to buy or maybe rent one.

http://wdfw.wa.gov/hatcheries/overview.html


One major milestone was the mass marking of virtually all hatchery coho and Chinook salmon released from state hatcheries. Using automatic fin-clipping machines, state hatchery crews mark more than 100-million fish each year for release from state and tribal hatcheries, allowing for easy identification of hatchery salmon on the fishing grounds

Yep, the state of Washington has 3 of those portable fin clipping units. They trailer the portable units around to all the different hatcheries.

I have seen it work first hand. Very fast and super efficient and way cool to watch.

 

[barkerfam]

In most cases there is no money wasted as volunteer anglers clip them for free. The reason is that it allows for a small retention sport fishery which otherwise would not exist, at least in JDF where unlike some areas we are not currently allowed to keep them if they are not clipped.

As for the head recovery program I assume it is to recover the small number of salmon heads that actually have nose tags. I would think most Coho heads turned in are discarded and I don't know if they are even scanned as most if not all would not have tags.

Down here in the states, the fish checkers at the launches have a wand with which they check all cohos and chinook. Of course, the checkers are only there for parts of each day and only at some launches. Therefore many get missed.

In the canadian method, all of the heads are sent to get checked. a better way if fishermen do their part.

 

[fshnfnatic]

We need to get a portable fin clipping machine like they have in Wash. state to clip ALL our salmon. Just need to raise some $ to buy or maybe rent one.

http://wdfw.wa.gov/hatcheries/overview.html


One major milestone was the mass marking of virtually all hatchery coho and Chinook salmon released from state hatcheries. Using automatic fin-clipping machines, state hatchery crews mark more than 100-million fish each year for release from state and tribal hatcheries, allowing for easy identification of hatchery salmon on the fishing grounds

Wow!! The US has sure amped up the hatchery program. From 2001 to 2011 it's gone from 22,000,000 to 72,000,000
Spring salmon. That's just amazing. Thank you US of A!!

 

[Klob]

Yup as we cut back on hatchery funding, the U.S. is ramping up.
Go figure.