u got to give wdfw time.. they need the time to cook the books !!

yep, they want to "find" enough redds to get us out of the penalty box so the tribe doesn't feel pressured to scale back

The Nation is not governed by the GHP only their 50% plus the 7% or 8% taken in the ocean. To be frank the nation has, give or take on ones perspective, stayed within their sharing in recent years. Little high on Chinook but all within reason. In fact it is to the Nations fishers a bonus if our fisheries are restrained as makes getting escapement way easier.

Staff has provided the preseason forecast models for folks which should not be confused with the harvest forecast models which will be available in March as the season options are developed. If your not on my personal e mail list and want the models let me know and I will get them to you. The preseason models have a lot of information and frankly it can be confusing to say the least but a lot of run history is in them that allows one to look back in time. The one short coming is that they have is that escapement numbers only go to 2016 which is important when we are looking at a restricted season due to a low forecast.

So, the recent online forecast meeting, how did it go? The numbers for harvestable Chinook and Coho are low and we are in a bind with Coho numbers being low and missed escapement 3 out of 5 years which restricts NT harvest impacts to 5% of the run. Then we have the fact that the 2020 escapement numbers are not done yet which is confusing as few Coho spawn in February. This is important as if we made Coho escapement in 2020, we are not in the 3/5 penalty.

We are out of the 3/5 penalty for Chinook but frankly if we have a fishery on Chinook, we will blow escarpment in NY minute. Some folks want to be able to keep a clipped Chinook (hatchery) but these are the prodigy of the volunteer Broodstocking every year for over 20 years to rebuild and maintain the Satsop Chinook and not a true hatchery run. We blow that Satsop run apart (again) it will not only screw the fish over but have an extremely negative impact on fisheries from Fuller Hill downstream as these clipped adults are part of the natural spawning population in the Satsop. The local community volunteers have put in over half a million dollars in man hours trying to keep that from happening, again. To be frank that is their choice as they choose to give back to the resource while others simply want to take for their own purpose. I am in the give back group which puts me at odds with some folks. That said the fact the commercials can keep one as incidental rather than use the recovery box and release grates on some folks and rightly so but then the GH Policy does not allow for targeted commercial Chinook harvest which is good.

Then we have the fact that 2020 hatchery jack returns at Bingham were X6 & wild X 4 over the previous year which was about average. The ocean PDO was very favorable when compared to the previous 5 years which should indicate a good return. That appears to be the case in the Columbia so why the difference Grays Harbor and Willapa, I do not know but something is a bit weird about this. So, we wait to see what 2021 seasons will resemble.

On a personal note, I would like to say this. My e mail has been on fire with what can only be described as very personal attacks on Ron Warren and other staff, guys that is uncalled for. I have known Ron for over 30 years, and he is descent guy. Now why he makes some of the god-awful decisions he does is a mystery to me. Why rather than guide the agency harvest managers to be more open and franker he chooses to go for the bunker mentality is also a mystery. Take the Grays Harbor and Willapa Advisers and no notification or anything that they had been cancelled! We found out only from his comments at a Commission meeting. The list goes on and on, but this is business folks and WDFW has a system and culture that it operates with. You can disagree strongly with WDFW staff right down to being rude but get off the personal attacks guys it is unnecessary. It does not further your argument or position and leaves an impression of you being a bit (you choose the word).

All that said this, Ron your description of the Grays Harbor and Willapa Advisers at the Commission meeting is downright insulting, short sighted, dishonest and these are the kindest words I can think of to describe your actions. Your better than that guy and it saddens me to see you reach that low.

So, folks we wait to see what shakes out for 2021 salmon seasons as the process such as it is goes forward.

No one should have to release a clipped hatchery fish no matter what kind of rambling explanation anyone gives.

Let me see if I get you correctly. One should kill a clipped brood stock adult fish that is part of a rebuilding effort and wild genetics so you can fulfill your desire to kill the creature? I get that correctly? Even if that results in the natural spawners being drastically reduced and likely driving the stock below escapement is your thought? Interesting how your thought process works as to conservation.

My question would be why ad-clip fish that you want to spawn in the wild? If you want to identify the cultured fish, give them a maxillary clip or freeze brand or ?? but remove them from the "Hatchery" pool so they can spawn.

Yup no argument here CM but the agency said had to do ad clip vs vent fin or other. Not sure if it was before you came to us for the meetings but if you recall it got heated over that at the meetings as they were not clipped at all for years for that reason. Agency said all the mass marking requirements dictated ad clip. My preference is an vent clip which was used for some of the work on Coho the volunteers did. It was an agency thing.

I can understand that a vent clip comes with mortality issues but a maxillary clip shouldn't be a problem. Not sure how much I trust what I was told.......

Personal attachment and emotion aside, there is ZERO evidence that wild Satsop kings aren't capable of sustainable NATURAL production on their own.

There is no credible basis for believing that hatchery-origin spawners on the Satsop are the cornerstone of chinook production out of the gravel beds. I'd be happy to reconsider that position if you can find me a document or study that says otherwise. Fairly confident it DOESN'T exist. I don't believe the agency even bothers to assess pHOS... the most basic metric of ANY well-run modern-day hatchery program.

The Satsop hatchery chinook program has been running for EIGHT full chinook generations now. The Satsop population is essentially flat over those same eight chinook life cycles. Looking at it objectively, what's the point in continuing the program at all. Just trying to be intellectually honest here. What say ye, SalmoG?

First off your lack of knowledge of the Satsop is substantial. Prior to the program the Satsop Chinook were the restraining stock for the river according to RW Stone. Harry Senn hoped to do something in the late 60's but the hatchery staff could not even find enough to use for brood. The other part that is not know is while LLTK was under contract to capture Chinook brood for the Humptulips the existing hatchery production was transferred to the Springs and reared to yearlings and released into the East Fork. These fish were a mix of many sources including Humptulips. Data on the returns is weak because the volunteers being new were unaware that they needed the blue pink white slips in the small bag with the snout and just sawed them off and put them in the freezer. Montesano no good that way so dispose of them and the Hatchery Ops about had a stroke. If I recall 30% of the captured broodstock had clipped fins.

Prior to Bingham the old hatchery at Schafer Park one year shipped 5 million eggs to the upper Chehalis hatchery and they perished with a power outage (this required about 1110 pairs). The records show 50 million transferred but it is considered a typo but the old hatchery was primarily Chinook and Coho came with Simpson in 1950 I believe.

Records are a bit strange back when. I used to have a picture of the old Springs Japanese Chum spawning channels with trays full front to back. A bio calculated that the number of eggs to be 5 million plus and they did not come from the East Folk and there are no records of a transfer but we were told the canal but I truly do not know of the origin. Dry bed Creek had several deep matrix incubators capable of up to 450K eggs that you will find no record of and I was shown one on the Hamm's property. Not sure what species was utilizing them but we were told late Coho by Carol.

So the purpose of the East Fork program was to stabilize the run so that commercial harvest % did not keep it distressed and Rec getting bounced off the Satsop and Chehalis. At that time the bay was no REC as was darn near the entire mainstem including tidewater. It was Tom Pentt, Senator Owen, and Jerry Paveltich with QIN support that finally forced fisheries to open up the river to REC. So the purpose of the program isn't to produce fish for harvest but to help the run survive the harvest. That the flat line on the numbers IS the desired outcome and that is why the eggtake goal has always been between 450k and 600k.

We can walk down memory lane some sometime if you would like. Hey I got a good example, where was the first Satsop Hatchery and what stock was used? Ok, the answer is near the mouth of the Satsop and the Coho stock used was Columbia.

Sorry, that sounds like a politician speaking in shrouded semantics. As Bill Clinton once said, "That depends on what the definition of 'is' is." Regardless the fish are being produced to prop up harvest. Absent this magical boost from hatchery fish, the harvesters would actually have to manage for escapement and simply curtail harvest. But wait, you said earlier that these aren't "real" hatchery fish... never mind.

That flat line is a reflection of what WILD self-sustaining gravel-based production is capable of achieving.... which rests entirely within the capacity of the available habitat to support it. The habitat is the limiter on natural production.

The hatchery origin spawners are simply displacing the natural-origin fish that could otherwise make use of the available habitat.

Let me illustrate with this example. The natural fish factory has room for 1000 workers to produce fish. The factory manager can can hire 1000 top-of-the-line employees to staff the factory to get the job done with MAXIMUM productivity.... OR.... he could instead sub out a couple hundred of them with "cheaper" ho-hum employees that produce say 70%... 60%... 50% of their top-of-the-line peers.

The mere presence of these inferior employees NECESSARILY means that the factory's total production goes down by some (currently unknown but) measurable amount. In other words, some unknown amount of pHOS is necessarily squelching the full production potential from the gravel.

Couple this with the fact that the hatchery program simply enables the harvesters to keep harvesting wild fish and you quickly see the folly in this model.

What's even more ridiculous is that the guys paying for this hatchery program reap some number statistically indistinguishable from ZERO benefit from the Satsop chinook hatchery. With ONE singular exception in 2016, the rec fisher has harvested ZERO Satsop hatchery kings in the past DECADE. The commercial sector harvests perhaps a couple dozen of them.

WDFW foots the ENTIRE bill to make the Satsop hatchery kings with the benefits accruing almost entirely to harvesters indiscriminately killing WILD Satsop-origin fish. AK and BC account for ~75% of the total harvest, and the QIN takes another ~25% of the harvest, leaving an oh so tiny sliver of a fraction of 1% of harvested Satsop-origin king (on a good year!) for WDFW-managed fisheries.

It's high time to FINALLY throw the home team a bone and give GH recs an opportunity to take a hatchery king home for the table.

Otherwise, what's the point in making them in the first place?

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Ah WDFW does not foot the bill it is RFEG & ALEA volunteer funds Doc. Oh and we will continue to disagree especially on your take on inferior which frankly is off. So I thought I would throw this into the mix.

As I am helping a friend out and tied to the computer I thought I would share this. If you want to be upset about Chinook think about this. In 1985 the Chehalis Chinook return for 3 year old was 1010, 4 year old was 3442, 5 year old was 12174, and 6 year old was 4418. By 2014 it is 3/ 2014, 4/12433. 5/2652, 6/0. There is a few years of higher returns but 1985 seemed to be a good choice to tear apart.

Now that is something that everyone should be concerned about. I have sent the preseason model to everyone I can and I urge folks to take the time and look at them. Doc and go around about Chinook every year, two different perspectives. What is not perspective if you look at the run composition by age (=size ) is that the Chehalis Chinook are in serous decline in age and size. With that is the decline in harvest that is only going to get worse not better as the fish keep getting smaller so will their ability to reproduce successfully. This not opinion but rather simple unescapable fact. I sent you the models, don't take my word look for yourself.

The WDFW-managed fisheries CANNOT constrain their take on these Satsop fish any further than we already have. We harvest next to NONE of them... hatchery or wild!

AK and BC take the lions share of Satsop kings... indiscriminately so, with disproportionate exploitation of older larger fish simply by virtue of where they take the fish.

QIN are the other major harvester.... indiscriminately so, but at least they place no disproportionate pressure on age classes like the northern intercept fisheries.

Look all I'm looking for at NOF is a fair shake for recs to reap some minuscule benefit, however small, from the hatchery kings produced by OUR tax dollars.

That it produces conservation benefits for Chehalis Basin wild chinook and wild coho in a year when we will have severe fishery constraints on those stocks makes it even more important that we just gitter'dun.

Who's in?

You miss the point that the only beneficiaries are the indiscriminate harvesters who have NO SKIN in the game of producing the fish they take.

The home boys PAY, but don't get to play.... TROOF!

Is it really that hard to grasp?

No Francis you miss the point. We started that program and built NOT so we could catch the fish but rather helping the fish survive THOSE WHO WANT TO AND DO KILL THE FISH. You seem to have trouble getting that some place value on the creature itself not harvesting it.

Much different concept than you have apparently.

A dead fish is a dead fish. Really doesn't matter where it is killed or by whom, it's dead. Obviously, of we could magically close BC and AK we would have more fish here for the folks who actually pay to produce the fish to harvest.

But, that ain't gonna happen anytime soon. So, the program that kept the escapement level allowed the harvest to continue but the fish also did not die out.

As to the ability of the habitat to produce fish it is my belief (based on the studies I have seen and done) that you need to put at least 1 and maybe 2 kilograms of spawner for each square metre of stream, as measured at summer low flow. For each species. The river can hold this..

I once did an exercise for Rivrguy and his folks that took the estimated habitat in the Chehalis basin and made suggested escapement goals for Spring and Fall Chinook, coho, and chum. I forget what the numbers were other than they were 10-20x what was done then, which was in the 90s or early 2000s, I think.

I would much rather put a WILD chinook on the gravel than a hatchery one. Tagging a hatchery king encountered while the gear is ALREADY deployed means an angler can exit the fishery.... his/her 1-fish bag is FULL. Impact STOPS when the gear leaves the water.... it continues on if the angler is forced to keep sorting for a keeper. The more other stocks are deemed retainable, the smaller the impact on the one needing conservation.

Wild fish are saved by minimizing encounters. Not because I said so, but because it IS so.... and without quibbling about what "is" is. Putting a hatchery king in a ONE-FISH bag accomplishes that by eliminating the unnecessary sorting required to bag a coho.

Well I gotta eat and my eyes ache from spread sheets but just to be a bit of and ass, the best way in a perfect world to put a wild Chinook on the gravel is don't hook them or net them period. That ain't going happen. Hell Doc there a whole bunch of folks that have serous objections to the Johns River fishery because it is a prime Chinook transition area and the release mortality. My response has been and will be that is how REC fishers utilize our limited impacts which includes myself. Which is far better than a kill fishery that others do be it tribal or NT and a dead fish is a dead fish. That some go to the bottom rather than the table is a shame but that is the price we ( and the fish ) pay so we can practice our sport.

CM I do not remember all of it but I remember that the upper Chehalis only ( above Fuller Hill ) pre settler came in at about 180k Coho average run size which shocked all of us. I do remember that you figured biomass of fish and it was just plain huge. Your example for us get a perspective was if you took every hatchery fish carcass that returned to a hatchery in Washington ST and dumped them in the Chehalis for nutrients it would not come close to what nature did pre settler. In fact mile for mile back then no other stream in the state came close for natural Coho.

Doc just because a human touches a Chinook and rears it does not make it inferior. 1 to 1 spawning protocols are adequate and the short rearing time result in a smolt that behaviorally is a little different. When it returns as an adult and spawns its prodigy are 100% the same as those never touched. Now where you are so right is when you then reuse the returning fish several generations without incorporating wild genetics then the genetics drift you are 100% correct. It is all about how you utilize the fish and what is brood.

I'll not disagree that that Chehalis Basin escapement goals are woefully TOO low. The Satsop itself could probably support the ENTIRE chinook goal for the Basin. But MSY-entrenched harvest management absent ESA will NEVER allow us to test the limits of carrying capacity. There simply isn't enough restraint out there to make it happen.

So for now, managers are content to prosecute a 60-65% exploitation rate on coastal chinook ( and I have ZERO reason to believe Satsop is anywhere below that) with 75% of that exploitation happening BEFORE a single fish swims over the bar. Bottom line, half the current gravel-borne production (3/4 of 2/3) is lost to harvest before a single Satsop fish swims past Westport.

Sorry.... we're NEVER gonna get to a point where we can test the production potential of the gravel in the context of that harvest framework.

When I first moved to Grays Harbor nearly THREE decades ago, I probed around inquiring about escapement goals. I was told that the 12,400 basin-wide Chehalis chinook goal hadn't been looked at in over 20 years. In fact my search led me to RivrGuy (though he didn't know me from Adam at the time) and I had difficulty extracting myself from what would ultimately be a 2.5 hour conversation. At the time, he informed me that Satsop was the backbone of chinook production for the system.

Well nearly 50 years after the fact, the e-goal for the system was finally re-visited... and true to form in the MSY/Ricker construct, where by definition there is ALWAYS a harvestable surplus that can be statistically calculated, the new and improved goal is now only ~9700. Predictably, the MSY mantra and Ricker curve produced yet another DECREMENT in the Chehalis e-goal. Gee-willickers... the problem isn't that we're NOT putting enough spawners on the gravel for sustainability; we're putting too many. Things that make ya go, "Hmmmmmmm?"