Someone, Dave Skinner I think, mentioned placing fertilized eggs into redds in other streams. It's been, and probably is still being, done. I've even seen info on school kids doing it in streams nearby their schools. Some go as far as to place screen enclosures over the redds to prevent predation and such. If not mistaken, it's shown some success. I haven't followed it for years, so I'm not sure if programs along those lines have had any long term success.
flint, yeah, there was a lot of that going on. Unfortunately, there's evidence some of that hydraulic mining is still having a negative effect on some portions of the rivers/creeks so mined. Sometimes there's adequate habitat above or below the reaches that are heavily impacted. Given enough of that, and enough returning adults, and good water years, and good ocean conditions, and so on, any given stock may or may not provide good numbers for following generations to continue.
Oh yeah, I think they have tried some of that placing fertilized eggs in man made redds in the San Joaquin watershed. Not sure how that's working either as I haven't lived down there for years and gave up trying to follow it all. Doesn't work well if they do get fry to hatch and make it to the ocean when some years the river bed is dry and the fish can't get back up.
Odds are good the situation in many places is not going to get better. More people = more pressure (in many ways) on natural resources and people still keep coming to Cali and the population still keeps growing in places (not Modoc, thankfully
to the chagrin of the Chamber of Commerce though.)
