More "Stubbies" Show Up in Steelhead Waters

For about 20 years now, Idaho anglers have had an easy way to know if a steelhead is a wild fish or a hatchery fish. A steelhead with its adipose fin intact is a wild steelhead and has to be released. But a fish without an adipose fin is a hatchery fish and anglers can keep it. The adipose fin, the small fin nearest the tail on the back, is clipped on hatchery steelhead before they are released to migrate to the ocean as juvenile fish. But now, anglers are catching a third kind of steelhead. It is a hatchery fish that still has its adipose fin intact. Anglers are required to release this fish as if it were a wild fish and they want to know why. These hatchery steelhead are part of a special program to increase natural production in select rivers, such as the Little Salmon River and South Fork of the Clearwater River. Every spring eight million hatchery steelhead smolts are released to migrate to the ocean. About 1.1 million or 14 percent of these juvenile fish do not have their adipose fin clipped off. When the steelhead return as adults, the unclipped hatchery steelhead are left in the rivers to spawn naturally. Anglers find it easy to recognize a hatchery fish because its dorsal fin was worn down in hatchery raceways when it is a juvenile fish, which is how it earned the nickname of "stubbie." This time of year, anglers are catching more stubbies because there are simply fewer hatchery steelhead to catch. Steelhead anglers catch and keep around 50 percent of the clipped hatchery adult fish between August and February. As a result, the percentage of stubbies and wild fish in the river increases as the percentage of clipped hatchery fish decreases.