So far this season, 34 steelhead pairs have been spawned according to Philip Bairrington, Supervisor of the Anadromous Fisheries Resource Assessment and Monitoring Program. “The theoretical number of pairings to date should be 62 pairs,” said Bairrington. “The effective genetic population size for Mad River Hatchery spawning is 250 fish, half of which (125) would be Natural Origin steelhead. The river has been muddy for the past few weeks, so it has been difficult for our Mad River Steelhead Stewards Volunteer Program to collect Natural Origin steelhead. Last week we notified the volunteers that they may collect seven days a week. The goal is to produce 150,000 yearlings for release on a high flow event in March every year. We are hoping that we can build up the numbers this year in the coming weeks to make up for some of the lower numbers recorded so far in the first half of the spawning season.”

“With the river clearing and no rainfall in the forecast, we should have a number of additional Natural Origin brood stock to spawn.” Bairrington added. Bairrington also noted that these fluctuations are natural, some years are higher and some years are lower. “In the lower years, ultimately, we will produce less than 150,000 yearlings and it could be that case this year, but we are less than half way through the season. The number of adults surviving all sources of mortality, returning to the river from the ocean, should be between 2% and 5%  of those 150,000 yearlings, or between 3,000 and 7,500 Hatchery Origin adult steelhead available for anglers to catch or harvest.”

According to Justin Kelly of Eureka’s RMI Outdoors, the Mad is just turning steelhead green, and there seems to be some fish around. “It’s still not red-hot, but there’s definitely some more fish around. Most of the fish are between the hatchery and the Blue Lake bridge, and just below the bridge. The fish are fairly spread out, and so are the anglers. Right now, there’s probably about a 50/50 mix of wild to hatchery fish. Conditions should be just about perfect this weekend with flows just above 7-feet,” Kelly said.