I dunno, I was hoping to find out how much of this run was actually wild
(and therefore more likely to spawn successfully) and how much was the
result of tribal plantings. I don't think that we can actually compare what
happens in an Alaskan river with a relatively intact ecosystem and the
Yakima with all its problems of water extraction, pollution and a flow
regime that (thanks to the Bureau of Reclamation) goes up and down like a
yoyo much of the year. Even at its best the Yakima, with an estimated 784
trout per mile in its fishiest stretch (the upper canyon) doesn't begin to
support anything like the numbers of fish that the "blue ribbon" streams of
the Rockies do. The biggest Yakima fish I've ever caught was nineteen
inches (measured), and a guide told me that in thirteen years of fishing the
Yak he could count the number of honest twenty-inch fish caught by his
clients on one hand. Historically, the rise of the Yakima as Washington's
best trout stream didn't come about until salmon were almost eliminated from
the river. As I said, I dunno. I hope that chinook, coho and steelhead can
be re-introduced (since they obviously will be) without damaging the trout
fishery, but I'm not optimistic.
