I'm not sure I could even begin to say how disappointed I am in WDFW's years of failure in steelhead management. But first, I'm feeling a deep sense of loss for me personally. The last wild fish I took was in 1993, and I later released others even though I could have kept them. My last wild fish came on a memorable early spring day on the Satsop. Since then I've done everything that WDFW asked or dictated to save I was on the Steelhead Advisory Committee (very disappointing leadership from WDFW - when I advised we need to protect the wild fish, the employee said, "but I like to eat them". True story from the '90's. When organizations brought the-wild-fish- need -protection subject up it was ignored. I captured fish for the Satsop broodstock program that looked to me like it was working. Scientific papers from outside WDFW banged the drum about wild steelhead declines, but they were basically ignored, and now we know the long term result. I testified before the Commission about needed steelhead protections more than once. I've followed every new rule. I pinched the barbs, I quit removing fish from the water, I bought a knotless net, I quit using bait, etc. just like almost all of us did.

One of the problems is that the new fish managers have no institutional memory. I've fished the westside rivers for more than fifty four years, and now it's all done.

Terrible irreversible over harvest is the main issue. The Queets once had returns of up to fifty thousand steelhead! And its habitat is still pristine! We should have quit killing wild fish years ago, and most of us knew it. The tribes over harvested the resource years ago, and now they're paying the price. We had the legal means to limit their harvest when they were catching substantially much more than their fifty percent, and we ignored our statutory duty that would even have protected the tribes from this final result. The escapement goals were set politically, not biologically.

No one is in charge, and no one will be held accountable. In my previous career in fish and wildlife enforcement, if we made a serious mistake, we could be held accountable to the law, and even sued personally. But not neglectful fish managers who seem immune to any form of corrective action, even from upper level management.

As a good example of questionable management, why is it that The Peninsula rivers have total closures, and steelhead are not even listed?. But on the Columbia, you can buy a listed Chinook from a dealer for dinner? Who's running this department?

There were many prescriptive suggestions for helping preserve steelhead and steelhead fishing, and they were recklessly ignored. The whole debacle seems tragically similar to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, eighty years ago today. We had the warnings but failed to act. The loss of fishing on my favorite rivers, isn't killing thousands as the bombing did, but right now, in the home stretch of my life, I feel like it's killing me.

To add to Tug's comments, pre-merger WDW had 14 dedicated steelhead/anadromous CT positions. Post merger there were zero as all were absorbed in salmon duties.

My personal view is that WDFW prefers marine mixed-stock salmon fisheries with ocean and outer Straits being the highest priority. They will trade pretty much everything else to maximize those fisheries.

May have mentioned it before but at one of the old Steelhead/Cuttrhoat Advisory Group meetings Phil A (pre-Director years) was asked why recs could not have a C&R steelhead fishery the last half of April on the Hoh. Harvestable fish remained in the share. Phil's answer was that the fishery currently in place was "What we wanted" but never identified who we was or why less than 50% was satisfactory.

Am I missing something or is Washington State the only state (or province) which is curtailing or closing winter steelhead fishing? I haven't seen that California, Oregon or BC have closed steelhead fishing. Seems a little strange if WA is the only one closing it.

https://www.dfw.state.or.us/news/2021/08_Aug/082721b.asp

You're missing a lot. There is a steelhead disaster up in BC that, numbers-wise, makes WA look monitor-league.