To separate this from GH/WB.

I wonder if back in the "heyday" of the Cowlitz nmaybe WDG paid for some of the steelhead. TCL had a legally binding agreement about what they re required to pay for. WDG "may" have done more, on their dime. I know they did Tiger Musky there, and those weren't mitigation fish.

Whenever the heyday of the Cowltiz was, the state could have spent state money on Cowlitz fish enhancement, but I have no knowledge of either agency having done so. On the other hand, neither agency (WDG and WDF) were not above spending Tacoma mitigation money beyond Tacoma's defined mitigation obligations. That contributed to difficulties in the 2000 license negotiations, with Tacoma even reserving the right to contract with a party other than WDFW to operate the Cowlitz hatcheries.

I've seen no records of 3 million steelhead in the Cowlitz as Chinook 1 referred to in the GH/WB thread. Certainly not 3 million adult steelhead nor 3 million steelhead smolts. The highest steelhead hatchery smolt production for the Cowlitz that I can recall was something north of one million smolts, maybe 1.2 or 1.4, far short of 3 million. And that was winter and summer smolts combined.

Yeah, the State did often use the mitigation monies elsewhere/elsewise.

Tug mentioned, back on the WB thread, that there "were" summer steelhead in the Colwitz before the dams. It is very similar to the Wynoochee Springs in that the State and Mitigatee agree as to what is mitigated for and how much that entails. Obviously, if there were summers (or Springs) and the mitigation agreement did not include them then the Agencies had very good reasons for not including them.

Maybe you should ask some of the old timers like Cowlitzfishermen. That have been around the Cowlitz for years or maybe you should go ask Mark Johnson the old hatchery manager, but again you weren't there in the 80's. And Jack Tipping Tiger Muskie program is a terrible program when your trying to recover wild fish. And should be stopped immediately. How come you didn't stop that in 2000 ?

Crickets.

Chinook 1, Cowlitzfisherman and I are friends, and he corrects me whenever I get one of the Cowlitz fish statistics wrong, so no worries there.

The tiger muskies are not major predators of juvenile salmon or steelhead. The tiger muskies prey mainly on pikeminnow, which do prey on juvenile salmon. Tiger muskies are water temperature dependent predators, and by the time they become really active in late spring, early summer, the salmon and steelhead smolts have mostly moved through Mayfield reservoir. So although tiger musky are an exotic species not native to the Cowlitz basin, none of the relicensing stakeholders raised it as an issue that had to be dealt with, and WDFW wanted to continue the program.

Plant fish.
It was promised.

Tug posted in the WB thread:

"Salmo, et al,

Tacoma Light should have an obligation for summer steelhead, because there were, indeed, in significant numbers of summer runs in the Cowlitz prior to Mayfield. I researched this in the early 2000's by talking with old timers from the Mossyrock area. Bob Shaner, now deceased, confirmed the summer run's existence because he caught them way back then. Prior to the dam being put in, the Cowlitz, especially in the summer, was a milky, glacial stream, so surveys, such as they were back then, would have been nearly impossible for accuracy if they even happened at all. (And I'm referring to Shaner's fishing in the 1950-60 era.) Of course Tacoma doesn't want to mitigate for any fish losses. They don't care about fish, just money, and they will weasel out of any obligations that they can. What has happened to the cutthroat program?

Keep up the good work, Salmo, I respect your postings."

I don't have them here at home now, but during the Cowlitz relicensing I collected all the WDF and WDG fish data for the fish trap they operated near the Mayfield dam site. The trap was operated for 2 or 3 years before the dam was finished, and those were the fish numbers used to develop Tacoma's mitigation obligations for the Cowlitz River. Steelhead were not recorded as being either winter or summer run, and some steelhead were trapped during the months that summer steelhead normally run. However, those numbers that might have been summer runs, including late winter run or spawned out kelts, were very low in number, although they were included in the total. So the mitigation number for steelhead was 12,000, this being the average number that returned during the years sampled before dam construction was finished.

It's worth noting that WDFW did not want the steelhead mitigation number included in the new license that FERC issued in 2002. The reason is that the Department believed they could, based on prior hatchery performance, get returns well above 12,000 (winter and summer runs combined) with releases of around one million hatchery steelhead smolts or more. And that was true, in the 1980s and 1990s when SAR (smolt to adult returns) were higher. But ocean survival rates have declined since then, not just for the Cowlitz River, but for all Columbia River tributaries, north coast, Puget Sound, and Salish Sea tributary rivers.

Tacoma's goal during relicensing was to minimize its financial exposure, which is typical of every power company and utility. Nonetheless, TP's hatchery costs increased compared to its first license period, which included major upgrades at the salmon hatchery, and its fish passage costs skyrocketed since they had been minimal during the first license. I don't know how much TP spent on the new juvenile fishway at Cowlitz Falls Dam, but I'd estimate it at well north of $50 million.

Last I heard the cutthroat program was halved, from 150,000 smolts to 75,000 because the USFWS representative was influenced by a report describing trout predation on juvenile Chinook. That was from CA's Klamath River if I recall correctly, and I don't think it's applicable to the Cowlitz, but mine wasn't the only vote on the fish committee. I don't know if any other changes have been made with respect to the SRC program. It would be easy enough to check with the Red Book.

"Tacoma's goal during relicensing was to minimize its financial exposure, which is typical of every power company and utility. Nonetheless, TP's hatchery costs increased compared to its first license period, which included major upgrades at the salmon hatchery, and its fish passage costs skyrocketed since they had been minimal during the first license. I don't know how much TP spent on the new juvenile fishway at Cowlitz Falls Dam, but I'd estimate it at well north of $50 million."

Who gives a chit???????
Last I heard they charge more for power too.
Plant fish or pull your fish blocking concrete wall out.

Ok, getting of topic here, but why isn't the science being followed when it comes to bass? I have yet to see science that shows bass forage on smolts in any significant amount, yet there is a push by the state to eradicate them from the Columbia/Snake systems as well as any lake that has salmon/steelhead wander through it. Obviously they are invasive/non-native, but the save the Orca crap is getting out of hand.

Thank you for the links...I have some reading to do

Back when I was in Grad School, which was at the end of the Owens Era and beginning of the Dawgfather, the UW Coop Unit was looking at in-lake predation of Issaquah Creek Chinook (in Sammamish). The findings? Use lures that look like Chinook in the spring of you want to catch lots of Smallies.

A while later, there was a lot of angst about spin rays eating the LW sockeye fry as the exited the Cedar, as there seemed to be a big in-lake loos of fry. It was easy to blame the predators, because they do eat sockeye. Just not then, because the water temps were below levels when they feed (much). We do know that the Tigers will eat salmonids; just not when the temps are too low.

As an aside on the Tigers, WDW made a regulation banning undesirable animals from the state. One of the criteria was that an animal would be banned if it preyed on native species. At the same time, they were aggressively touting Tigers. Anybody catch the dichotomy there?

They seemed pretty limited on ranges, but consistently documented predations.

Now, about the birds: https://www.nwcouncil.org/news/bird-pred...z8Lf3Nv76t32VlM

Hog wash that's like saying SRKW only eat wild Chinook. LMFAO

No, not even close to the same. Your's is an absolute whereas Salmo G.'s post includes a number of qualifiers.

So your both trying to tell the reader that Tiger Musky won't eat Salmon smolt. Where have you two been in the last couple of years. Because we have a big problem with their relative the Northern pike in Lake Roosevelt in eastern Washington. You might want to think twice about your statements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_muskellunge
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/may/17/surging-northern-pike-population-in-lake-roosevelt/#/0

Salmo didn't say they don't eat salmonids. They are not likely to eat smolts because of temperature during outmigration. They do eat salmonids, and WDFW knows that from sampling but it is likely that the majority are resident trout or salmon juveniles reading in the lakes in summer. Also, lake Roosevelt is not anadromous waters (now). They are eating resident salmonids.

Temporal and spatial considerations are important. There was a recent paper on Smallie predation in the Snake. They do eat Chinook smolts there. But, if there are lots of Sandrollers, they prefer them. Understanding the whole ecosystem might help us manage better.

I clearly did not take a position one way or another.....I simply pointed out that Salmo's post as written tacitly acknowledged that some predation by Tiger muskies may or does occur whereas your comparison attempted to characterize his post as definitively saying such predation does not occur.

To now try and draw the issue of Northern pike into the discussion further muddies the discussion.

Is there an underlying purpose/goal in your approach????

After reading all of his posts I believe trolling S.G. and yourself IS his underlying purpose and approach. There doesn't seem to be a logical thought process, and a lot of vague references to past practices. I don't have a horse in this race, just an observer to the direction of responses from him on this topic and others. He says he fishes with a rod and reel but does quite a bit from his keyboard as well. Just sayin', Bob R