something u need to remember is the old school personal at WDFW are retierd well most anyways..

so now u have a bunch of younger people who were raised as tree huggers and wild fish lovers.. no problem there with that..trying to run the show and figure out how to take it to the next level of keeping fish for the next generations.. I feel kinda sorry for them cause they got left holding the bag on the (whats left) of the fish runs..

though most of what there doing and the way there doing it doesn't make sense..

Not to derail this thread. So... What is going on for this winters harbor and coast winter steelhead fisheries? Have I missed something since the meeting in Oct.? Any concrete regs out yet? Any dates for concrete regs to be announced? Dazed and confused!

a guy told me he listend in the other nights meeting .. and he said it sounded like no fishing on the chehalis or its tribs.. but i haven't seen anything yet.. should be next week you'd think..

11/21/2021

Sunday morning:

More reflections, looking back to my arrival in Grays Harbor....1968

No Wynoochee Dam, no Bolt Decision, lots of hatchery salmon/steelhead, lots of wild Coho, Chinook, steelhead, Westport "Salmon Capital of the World", NT gill nets had the complete Chehalis--probably 50+ boats.

Wynoochee River and Chehalis River had spring Chinook, Wynoochee, Satsop, Humptulips all had wild steelhead, many over the 25# - 30# range, seasons on the Wynoochee and Satsop never closed until April 30, Humptulips had a 3 fish SH limit.

2021----Humptulips only Chinook fishery for sports, Coho and Chum legal for Chehalis, and tribs., fisheries are about closed because Wild Coho can't make escapement, Wild Steelhead, coast wide, are in danger, compared to 1968. Reasons for many of the problems....too many people wanta fish, commercial NT and Tribal, still allow to fish non-selective, guides, drifting craft and jet boats, have increased, from 1968 to present day, at an alarming rate. Technologies have improved, that fish can't hide anymore, fishing gear in general has improved leaps and bounds from 1968 days, now there is talk about 2/3 fishery per week. Sh!t and I don't know how to golf.......grrrrrrrrr

Ok it is the Bingham / Springs Coho update time for Nov. 24.

2021 adult Coho H 11,851 W 3270 Jacks 6836

2020 adult Coho H 8516 W 1250 Jacks 3880

As I said before I am using 2020 as a past reference because Wild Coho DID NOT make escapement. That said that the hatchery adult total is running around 29% to 30% above 2020 which means the back side the run is holding its own which is a good thing. The wild adult returns appear to be around 176% of the 2020 returns a really good thing as we are in serous deep crap activating the GH Policy 3/5 clause if we blow escapement this year ! The wild jack returns for 2021 are 362 and 2020 198 which gives us a 2021 W Jack return that is 182% of last year and that is really good news.

So I think we look OK for Coho this year but keep in mind all the tribs below Fuller Hill ARE NOT making escapement most years. I have had questions about Chinook escapement but I really do not know. The Springs numbers are not that substantial for Chinook but outside redd count results which come much later I do not know of a way to get a look at the numbers game with Chinook. I will E mail staff and ask but we may be a bit premature on trying to get Chinook data.

The one thing that jumps at me in looking at the rack returns is Skookumchuck. Remembering that the stock is a later returning fish and IT RAINED EARLY these numbers may or may not be misleading.

2021 H Coho adults 1266 W Coho adults 15 H Jacks 63 W Jacks 15
2020 H Coho adults 414 W Coho adults 4 H Jacks 63 Wild Jacks 1

Forgot to add that the coming Saturday storm is going to slam the Olympic side of the Basin. At Haywire ( near W. Satsop headwaters ) nearly 5 1/2 inches Saturday so things are going to rumble in the tribs Fuller Hill down. Upper Chehalis rain nothing out of the ordinary.

So the 10 day forecast is around 8 inches on the Olympic tribs but the Saturday shot is going to be butt ugly!

Last week the QIN released this year's regulations for steelhead, I think the Queets/salmon river season is the writing on the wall for what WDFW is going to tell us on monday..

Sad to see it come to this.

BTW steeley plenty of the old wdfw guys that retired or are about to retire are certainly "wild fish guys".

Saw that! Hardly even gets going until Jan. The predictions must be the worse ever. What do they use to determine winter run predictions? Summer returns?

For those that are fishing the Satsop did as forecasted going from around 2500 cfs to around 11,000 cfs overnight. It is 10 AM and it is cresting at the Satsop Nursery bridge. It is going to take around 4 days to drop to 6000 cfs and a few more days to be back down to 2600 cfs. How fast it clears is going to depend where you are I think but the Chehalis is going to be around the same flows as the Satsop above Fuller Hill so you should have a burst of color there but not a blow out. The Willis property on the Satsop will likely muddy things up as it continues to erode.

So choose your poison the mud is going to be one place or another. The old rule is Upper Chehalis water takes 4 days to reach the bay so the Satsop may clear and the Chehalis muddy up as the upper basin muddy spot comes down stream.

Little back some of us were wondering what the numbers look like for escapement. Mike Scharpf got back to us and this a snap shot of were we are this year on escapement. I would have bet that the Chinook did better, this rain sure made those fish act differently.

From: Mike Scharpf

Thanks for your patience. I’ve updated my Chinook redd in-season update model that gives me an idea how this seasons redd count looks. There’s an interesting mix, but overall, numbers of Chinook redds in ten select index reaches enumerated this season is about half the average. With that said, there has been high water this season and many of these indexes are mainstems, and survey conditions haven’t been great. We haven’t completed a survey in on the Skookumchuck yet, visibility and high flows have prevented any. These numbers don’t include any of the supplemental surveys or in smaller, less influential index reaches, so this are very preliminary. We aren’t sure yet how this year’s flows have influenced spawner distributions. With what has been enumerated in these ten indexes in my model, the spawning escapement may be around 9,000 to 9,500 fish. Coho numbers, however, are looking pretty good.

https://fortress.wa.gov/dfw/erules/efishrules/erule.jsp?id=2782

Have I missed this post somewhere? Chehalis, Hump, Satsop among others-CLOSED to all fishing on 1 Dec !

yup in the Steelhead Regs thread.

Thanks-I did miss Todd's post. I wasn't alone yesterday-at least 4 others also missed the change. Going to be a long winter!

Thanks WDFW

Should WDFW have done something different? If so, what?

I think what he is getting at is that WDFW should not have allowed the runs to deteriorate to the point they are at now. Some they can control, like escapement, but they really seem to have little impact on land use.

We do not have much of the Dec & Jan returning Steelhead as they hit the dumpster with the early timed hatchery releases by old WDG intended to be primarily caught by the Nation. In the process they decimated the Late Native Coho to the point darn near not viable. To be honest even if the winter Steelhead numbers were better or much better the Chehalis should have been closed in Dec & Jan simply to protect the remnant populations of native Late Coho. That simple and that ugly all in one sentence. The jig is up.

In a conversation I was asked what about the winter Steelhead hatchery programs? Well rounded off using 2020 releases from the preseason forecast 276,000 are Wynoochee and Skookumchuck mitigation and 64,300 are WDFW production on the Satsop. The mitigation fish are required due to the dams and the Satsop production is a WDFW program at their discretion as to if it continues or is dropped.

One thing I observed at the presentations at the Pacific Coast Steelhead Management meetings (but it was a decade ago) was that the only really successful hatchery programs were the huge ones. The piddly-assed 10-20-30K plantings returned next to nothing. It was the 200-300-500K stockings that supported fisheries. As I recall, when I asked, nobody was looking into why it took the larger programs to be successful. I suspected then, and still do now, that the smaller programs were supported by so few spawners that genetic issues were easy to have.

Many of us had questions on Coho escapement for 2021 so as asked I e mailed Mike to see if it was possible to get an update for everyone. His response is below.

From Mike Scharpf:

Everything I’ve seen related to Coho shows escapements will far exceed goals. However, even if the goal is achieved this year, which it will, the goal was missed in 2017, 2019, and 2020, so even with a strong 2022 forecast, we will have missed the goal 3 of the last 5 years. Its going to be an interesting NOF.

Rather have this out as opposed to a surprise. I kind of think the forecast will be fairly robust for next year.

Missing it 3/5 years puts us in the penalty box, correct?

Fish on...

Todd