Bank springers

[plumb2fish]

Plants on the Sandy are now done in Bull Run and were cut drastically. This is not something I've made up, it is fact, sprinters have a high stray rate though so not sure how this will affect fishing...the plants have in fact been held up UNTIL an acceptable plan is drafted to deal with comingling on the spawning grounds on the McKenzie...

 

[plumb2fish]

They actually only plant 132,000 smolts (target) in Bull Run now, springers have an average adult return rate of about 1 in 200 on this river. So, expect 600-800 adult hatchery fish for the system.

 

[plumb2fish]

In the meantime, ODFW has annually released fewer and fewer spring chinook smolts into the river since 2011 when it released about 1,220,000 smolts. It released 1,007,800 smolts in 2012, 867,000 smolts in 2013, 854,000 in 2014 and plans to release 604,750 smolts this year.
McKenzie River #'s

 

[DrTheopolis]

the plants have in fact been held up UNTIL an acceptable plan is drafted to deal with comingling on the spawning grounds on the McKenzie...

Pretty sure ODFW got the OK to go ahead with the planned releases a couple of weeks ago. I know they've been reducing the number of plants gradually to mitigate hatchery/wild spawning. I know they were also ordered to continue working on a mitigation plan. But pretty sure they're releasing smolts as planned (IIRC, they lawsuit only sought to reduce the plants this go-around, but I'm sure they had bigger plans down the road).

I'm not a fan of the NFS. Seems like their end goal was to turn the Sandy and Mac into trout fly C&R fisheries exclusively (which everyone saw through).