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An Interview with Greg Travers, Fish Hatchery Specialist Greg Travers is a 25-year veteran with WDFW's Hatchery Division. A Fish Hatchery Specialist 3, he has served at the Puyallup, Hoodsport, Dungeness, Sol Duc, Percival Cove and BearSprings Hatcheries. Currently he is serving at the Elwha Rearing Channel west of Port Angeles. The Elwha Rearing Channel's mission is to keep alive the wild Elwha River chinook salmon run as federal and state decision-makers consider removing one or two dams on the river that currently bar the salmon from miles of spawning habitat. To that end, Travers has become an expert at snatching salmon ready to spawn from the river so their eggs and sperm can be used for hatchery production. Raising the young wild salmon in the hatchery ensures more will survive.

Q: What is the problem with the Elwha chinook that requires catching the chinook and bringing them to the hatchery? A: They don't home in on the water leaving the (hatchery fish) trap. They'll come back to the river but they won't come back to the trap. So we have to go into the river and get them. Basically, the fish in the river are a mix of wild and hatchery fish. Q: Why won't the fish come back into the trap? A: We take a little bit of water out of the Elwha for the hatchery and shoot it back into the river. There isn't enough distinction between what's coming through the trap and what's in the river so the fish just stick in the river. Q: Doesn't this hatchery have an important role in trying to restore the wild chinook run in the Elwha? A: We've maintained the run and probably with dam removal we'll be more involved in restoring the wild chinook. Q: Catching these fish requires a special skill, how do you do it? A: We target spawning chinook. We gaff them with 15-20 foot poles topped with large hooks. We go out and watch for spawners. We snag them and take their eggs and sperm right on the river. Then we take the eggs and sperm to the Hurd Creek Hatchery because we don't have incubation facilities at Elwha Channel. Click on photo for full image Q: Is snagging salmon difficult? A: It is demanding at times. The hook releases once the fish is snagged. Then you fight salmon up to 40 or 50 pounds on about a 5-foot line. In some sections of the river you do a lot of walking looking for one or two fish, a fish here and fish there. In other areas where there is a little better gravel there may be 10-15 pairs spawning at one time. you have to be very patient on the river. You have to learn the water and how the fish are going to react in different areas and types of water and then it becomes easier. For example, if there is more than one fish, always approach from the downstream side. If you spook them ... if you approach from the upstream and there are five pairs spawning, you are going to lose them all. Always target the females first ... you learn there is usually a head fish in the group. If there are four males and a female, she is usually the head fish. Q: It's like fishing requiring stalking? A: You need patience just to get out to the fish and you have to learn how to judge the distance from the tip of the pole to how close you are to the fish. You have to make sure you get that pole past that fish. You can't just stick the pole out. You have to kind of draw the pole down with the current. You judge the fish is, say 12 feet from you, you draw it down in the current and you better be right. That takes a while to learn. You also have to learn to read depth. You don't want to hurt or kill the fish if it's not ripe. You learn to pull the pole when the hook is at the head and you'll get it just below the dorsal (fin). You don't want to hook it deep. If you hit in the dorsal you can release it. We get very few fish that aren't ripe by this method because we watch them. We may get one or two a year that aren't ripe because once in a while fish pass through an area where we know there are a lot of spawners. Usually we can release salmon that aren't ripe and catch them a week or two later when they are ready to spawn. Q: Describe stalking the fish. A: You work slowly out to the fish and wait until it is in the right position. You have to have your feet planted just right, because once you have them they are going to take off. You wait while males are moving in and out and the female will be moving up and down a little bit. If you miss the female, she'll go but the males will stick around, trying to see where the heck she's gone. You get a feel for when it's right after a year or two. That is why you have to be patient. For example, there are spots where we know we have a real tough time getting a fish for whatever reason. If you let a female spawn in one of those spots, she will keep the rest of the females away from that spot for two to three weeks until she dies. Then the other females come back to a spot where you can get at them. You don't want to spend 45 minutes to an hour trying to get a fish that is almost impossible. You learn that over a period of time, the spots that you can't get at. Q: How much of the river do you cover and how many fish do you take? A: Bob Colvin (another WDFW Elwha employee) and I probably cover 2 miles or 2.5 miles of river. It varies, this year we were up to about 720 chinook between the two of us. We usually take over half of our eggs by this method. We are looking at 4.75 million eggs a year so we gaff roughly 700 to 1,000 fish in maybe five weeks, gaffing every day. Q: Did you develop this technique? A: No, Ernie Brennan, who was the manager of the Dungeness Hatchery for many, many years, started it, as far as I know. I inherited it.