The ODFW used to recycle excess spring chinook during the hey-day runs of the Rogue in the 1980s. But the agency scrapped the program in 1989 as too expensive for the benefits it created. But those attitudes changed last year. With run numbers way down and the percentage of hatchery fish way up, biologists returned to the recycling program to boost fish numbers in the river and give anglers more chances to catch hatchery fish. And these aren t the kind of recycled cast-offs you put in the red bin next to the curb on trash day.
Recycled fish have a hole punched in their left gill plate to denote their rerun status.
Pease and other technicians released the first 375 of the chinook in four trips this week to TouVelle State Park. More may be released this week. The fish are considered excess because they are above what is needed at the hatchery. The rest either go toward the recycling program, are given to Native American tribes to fulfill Oregon s treaty obligations or are sold to a seafood processor through an annual bidding process, Pease says. No chinook from Cole Rivers have been sold or given away for treaty obligations so far this year, Pease says.