The trout-farming industry says it can raise rainbows for just 60 percent of what it takes the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, and now a bill introduced in Olympia would require the agency to spend up to half of its stocking budget on buying fish from the private sector as early as mid-2014.
But there was pushback during a hearing yesterday on SB 6268.
Matt Zuvich of the Washington Federation of State Employees says that not all costs are being factored into the equation.
"There's the price of trucking the fish to where we put them," he told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources & Marine Waters yesterday morning.
He also challenged whether or not private growers really can raise trout for $3.10 a pound, as John Dentley of Trout Lodge stated during his testimony.
For his part, Dentley said that while it's unclear exactly how much it costs WDFW to raise trout, he estimated it to run around $5.50 a pound and that implementing SB 6268 would save the state $3.6 million every two years.
"If I told you the state could save 40 percent on services while getting equal or better results, would you not act on it?" he asked senators.
Dentley termed it a "win-win," saying not only would anglers get more and larger fish, but it would result in increased license sales juicing WDFW's coffers.
However, Ada Isakkson, the wife of a longtime state hatchery worker in the Chehalis River basin, testified that a study from the mid-1990s found WDFW "to be the least expensive" grower on a per-pound basis compared to private, tribal, other state and federal hatcheries.
"I think Fish & Wildlife needs to look at raising more fish, not taking them away," she said.
Jack Field denied that the bill was in any way an attack on state employees. Swapping out his cowboy boots and wolf fladry for rubber boots and fish pellets, he said the Washington Fish Growers Association, which he was repping at the hearing, "believes it can grow a high if not superior product to the department's."
Heather Bartlett, WDFW's statewide hatchery manager, did not provide any cost estimates during her brief testimony, but acknowledged the need in this economy for the state and her agency to look for cost efficiencies. She welcomed an audit.
There are other things to consider. Moving trout production to private vendors may not only affect the timing and sizes of fish that WDFW stocks into lakes -- with state waters' varied productivity and management goals, it releases everything from 2-inchers to 5-pounders -- but the array. In addition to rainbows and triploid, or sterile, rainbows, it raises and/or releases cutthroat, kokanee, brown trout and tiger trout as well as an warmwater species.
SB 6268 is sponsored by Senator Dan Swecker, a Republican representing much of Thurston and all of Lewis Counties who has been involved in the fish-farming business and has also received just under $3,000 in campaign contributions from a local grower, Cascade Aqua Farms, over the years.
He said the bill was brought to him by the industry, and it would benefit more people.
While it's unclear if there's enough support for the bill to move forward with looming legislative cutoff dates, it comes at the same moment in which WDFW has concluded a sweeping 18-month review of its inland fish program.
The nut is that, if fully implemented, the agency would refocus on trout stocking in Pugetropolis, a region saddled with numerous ESA restrictions that are now beginning to choke fisheries, such as winter steelheading.
It would be out with the dink 7- to 8-inch rainbows that harass our baits and in with much more satisfying 11-inchers. Already some South Sound waters are being stocked with upsized fish, a few more hatcheries are coming online to do so this year, and by opening day 2013, it could be fully implemented regionwide.
"Our intent in Western Washington is to produce a better product," WDFW's new Inland Fish Program manager Chris Donley told me earlier this week.
He terms trout fishing the agency's "base program," and is looking how to grow it in the short and longer term.
WDFW has also come up with a new marketing strategy outline for its inland fisheries, including trout. An outline presented to the Fish & Wildlife Commission states:
License sales for anglers that target trout and warm water fisheries in our lakes form the single largest base relative to fish related income to the Wildlife Fund. Ensuring current and future stocking plans promote increased public participation is key to ensuring fiscal stability for the future.
A team of fish biologists and hatchery staff have worked closely over the last 18 months to evaluate current stocking strategies relative to public interest with the goal of increasing angler participation.
The team has developed an Integrated Fish Management Strategy that includes prioritization for the release of larger catchable trout and the expanded use of warm water species to provide diverse opportunity in time and place to expand utilization and improve our overall lake fishing opportunity.
Concurrent with the development of an Integrated Fish Management Strategy and Inland Fish Marketing Plan that will focus on some key areas or market groups to increase or expand the purchase of recreational fishing licenses.
