Not on the river that I know of. I don't think Tribal leadership has any interest in NT recreational fishing. If WDFW worked for its constituents, it would just leave the river open as it always did - closed for Chinook and tell the Tribe to go pound sand. It's a fly fishing river. Only poachers target Chinook. WDFW has to do whatever the Tribe tells it or give up fishing time in marine waters. Ergo, WDFW will throw trout and steelhead fishing under the bus to save a few days of mixed stock salmon fishing in PS.

I know Salmo. I was figuring that a Tribe could do some recreational eye poking since WDFW is only interested in marine-caught chrome cod.

Situation sounds a whole lot like wild LCR tules. Adult recruitment incapable of replacement... wild tules functionally extinct were it not for oodles of hatchery-origin strays swamping the gravel.

Curious what in your mind makes one more worthy of saving than the other?

Yes! Who issues gold stars around here?

With regards to what Doc says, we (the Royal We) need to publicly hold folks accountable. Keep boats away from SRKWs? In 5 years how many more will we have? Sunset the law/rule if it doesn't work. Give me an estimate of the increases in Stilly Chinook generated by the CT closure? Don't meet it? Fish CT. Want money for dam removal? Give me a 10-year future estimate of populations? Don't make it? Pay whomever funded the removal back. Apply the same to homeless, gun issues, infrastructure. We need to demand quantifiable results.

Doc, intrinsically neither is worth more than the other in terms of ecosystem values. However, as a fish snob, a quality I expect that you identify with, Stilly Chinook are genetically very similar to Skagit summer Chinook. And they are fat dripping delicious! (I've never eaten a Stilly Chinook.) So for ecosystem and ESA purposes, Tules should be maintained via hatchery supplementation ideally, replacement practically, so that the genotype is not lost. Unlike Stilly Chinook, where even the hatchery program struggles with replacement recruitment, LCR Tules fortunately don't have that problem in the foreseeable future.

Salmo

You mention the loss of ecosystem function when we manage for hatchery fish and over harvest the wild.

Starting with LCR Tules why not manage each hatchery stream for a combination of ecological and hatchery needs. Use, say, 1kg of spawner per square metre of stream and then add on the number needed to meet program. That way you can produce the hatchery fish, have high harvest rate fisheries, and still meet the ecosystem need for nutrients.

I would add to that a proposal that every fully blocking dam in the anadromous zone (let's start with Coulee) that we pass a million Chinook to meet the fishery needs of natives (whose right to fish is geographically fixed), other people, and the ecosystem. No need to have downstream passage as the goal is ecological replacement of adults.

C'man, That's another idea that should work with Tules. If Tules can't recover, then continuing the hatchery program for harvest and ecosystem benefits would be a win for those species that can sustain in the lower tributaries (cutthroat and steelhead, and just maybe coho.).

A million Chinook upstream of GC? First we gotta' get a million past B-10. Then a million past Wells. Then a million is how many truck loads of adult Chinook? Not saying it's impossible, just that it's a mighty big job.

Salmo,

In another forum you suggested cutting tule releases altogether so that in four years they would be gone and no longer a constraint on whacking wild Brights. Which is it?

""Hmmm, here's another thought. Just stop releasing hatchery tules altogether. I postulate that lower river tule habitat is degraded to the point that naturally self-sustaining tules don't and cannot exist. So in four years the river will be barren of tules, and fishing forecasts and seasons can be set according to the abundance of the Chinook we actually want to fish for and catch. How, pray tell, does this not work?""

Options. Either go balls to the wall with hatchery tules and more or less ignore the wilds or let the wilds go extinct with no hatchery fish to mess it up. Choices. But either **it or get off the pot.

But, Salmo, if it was a requirement that dams need to mitigate the ex=cosystem losses as well as the catch losses the managers could figure it out. Couldn't they?

Good catch Darth. In the first instance I was just thinking of a solution to the immediate issue of pretend conservation for recovery of Tules. If NMFS demands ESA recovery actions for Tules when thoughtful ecologists understand the futility, then it would make sense to simply stop raising the hatchery variety to empirically demonstrate that futility. If the impossibility of recovering natural production Tules were acknowledged, and the parties agree that hatchery Tules provide both harvest and ecological value, then yes, go ahead and rear and release them provided they are not used as an ESA constraining population. Is this good enough?

C'man, I believe effective mitigation is an ethically (and legally) bound duty. And it is with non-federal, FERC licensed dams. But astoundingly - to me - it's optional with federally owned dams, like the Corps and BoR dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. So yes, project owners and fish managers can figure it out, with the understanding that in-kind mitigation is sometimes impossible.

In my fantasy world it is not that hard. We already manage to a number for escapement. Just make the number bigger. I am also looking at (for dams) mitigating the lost catch and lost ecosystem values. As such, this does not require downstream passage.

I know this damages/destroys the wild run in those streams but I seriously doubt there is any meaningful recovery/sustainability for purely wild anadromous fish above a dam because of losses in the reservoirs.

So we triage. The tradeoff for the Columbia River hydrosystem is no hydro in the anadromous zone in WA and OR outside of the Columbia watershed. The rest is wild fish.

But, my view the world is apparently a very warped and minority view.

True on both counts, but you're in good company.

Very good company.