I agree, Rivrguy. I really supported the switch because I thought it would remove the worst of the political pressure from the agency. Boy, was I ever wrong on that.

But, if you go back to the WDF model with the Governor appointing the Director, would it be any better? Only have to appoint one person.

I sent an email to the Port of Aberdeen website using the email address that Mr. Hamilton gave me. I sent it a week ago asking about the possibility of opening Sterling Landing on Oct. 1 when fishing opens for salmon. Still no response.

9/24/2024

Lifter99, I sent a email also....about history of the bar, that Mr. Sterling bought the land so that the general public would have access to that part of the river.

I got a answer "Thanks Bill"


I'm thinking the general public better find other access to the Wynoochee. As I read the sign on the locked gate....NO ACCESS, legally, to that whole area.

This is now Port of Grays Harbor, just like Friends Landing, property. The Port makes the call, and on Sterling Landing, that has been a "money flow out, with nothing coming in"

I have had some inquiries on what I see on the river. Well not much is an understatement and to be honest damn strange. Some folks are catching for sure and for others not so much. Fish are coming into the river but not hanging out or staging in middle section of tidewater. It seems they are simply moving up with few showing no jumping rolling no nothing here in the Central Park reach. Why I have no idea and this pattern I have not seen since the 90s. When compared to the last four years when the Coho were way up early in large numbers it is just the opposite this year. So if I had to hazard a guess I would say this year looks to be more of a traditional run timing performance.

Chehalis flows are 336 cfs at Porter and several tribs are below average but not a record low flows. The Olympic streams forecast precipitation is around an inch plus or minus depending on location over the next couple of days. Upper Chehalis not so with half to three quarters an inch. Ten days out another rain event after the one forecast for the next couple of days.

So choose wisely because I do not believe that the fish are going to help us out a lot. Fish do what fish do and volunteering to make thing easy for anglers I doubt is one of their priorities!

Another thing to remember about fish, especially those runs exposed to high harvest rates, is they spawn (or get their eggs taken) because they weren't caught.

If you put a 20-30% total exploitation on a run, most of what spawns was obviously not caught, but a lot of "dumber" ones made it to the grounds. You take 90-95% (nice hatchery run) and almost every fish was not on'y exposed to fishing but survived. By not biting, by not pausing on the way up, by coming in when the seasons were closed.

And we are changing the rain patterns. I took a look once at rainfall in the Cedar River watershed with a break, I think, as pre and post 1980. The rainfall over September-December was the same but as I recall September and October were much drier and November much wetter. Changes how the fish respond.

When I was much younger and started working in the woods Hoot Owl even after Oct 15th happened. Couple of times woods stayed locked down and hunting season set back until the rains came. Our summers are much different than the 1960s and 70s. Now I feel old!

When we started out in the Discovery Bay studies we installed a weather station. We started in fall of '76, which was a big drought. Drought broke in March of '77. For the next couple of years we had a minimum of one inch of rain every month into, I think, the late summer of '79. They stopped collecting that data after I left, but such ling-term data on rain, flows, temperatures, and such is critical to our understanding of what the resources are doing.

Could it be said that only a certain percentage of a run of fish are biters? That being case, the biters get caught by anglers and the non biters spawn and could pass on more non biter tendensies. The Cowlitz Coho come to mind. Of course Commercial nets indescriminatly take everything, so I guess it balances out?

Most of the Chinook and coho are probably taken by hook and line; the nets are more mop-up. The net fisheries affect timing. The intensive netting will shift timing to the non-netting periods.

The Chehalis Basin is a strange watershed because it a rainfed stream (mostly) not snow pack. Flows at record low to average are not that far apart so we are always in a low flow situation in the summer. Why fish come in early like last year vs a few years back when R-6 manager Steve Thiesfeld shut things down on ended being run well short of forecast and LATE nobody knows. Water temperature, PH, DO these are always present in one shape or form. A friend of mine who worked with fish all his adult life said fish just seem to know when it not a good thing to be in the river. They have time before spawning so who knows. One lesson I got in the 90s dry years was with Chinook. We captured males but almost no females and as we got to November with the males starting sour on us here come the Chum just pouring up the river and with them female Chinook and we got of 40 female Chinook in a day. We witnessed this three years if I recall correctly and why I do not know. Why behavior changes vary not so much from year to year but in blocks of years several years is a mystery to me.

A good example is the Satsop in the 80s always lots and I mean lots of redskins rolling around and if went to the Chehalis even more above South Monte. Now not so much in fact nothing like the past. Sure we have lost 60% of our hatchery Coho production and that is a biggy but the behavior should be similiar just less numbers.

It will be interesting to watch this year for sure but it is feeling more like the year Steve had to deal with. Run forecast well above actual returns with fish running late. Keep in mind when the Coho under perform it is usually front to back not any week of Sept to Dec. The late thing ......

Good afternoon,

This is a friendly reminder that the Fish and Wildlife Commission will be hearing public comment on the draft revised Grays Harbor Basin Salmon Management Policy language at their meeting on Friday, September 27, 2024, in Spokane. You may provide comment virtually and you must register in advance to do so. If you would like to comment in person, you may register up to 15 minutes before the agenda item begins. The Grays Harbor agenda item is scheduled to begin at 2:30 pm, but times listed for the beginning of an agenda item are estimates only, and agenda items may be taken out of order at the Commission’s discretion.

Thank you for your interest in Grays Harbor fisheries,
Marlene Wagner
South Coast Fish Policy Lead
marlene.wagner@dfw.wa.gov

During my management years the (in my mind) best management of Pacific Salmon was the Fraser sockeye (for sure) and Pink fisheries. One of the keys was that at the weekly management meetings the staff went over current and historic data back to and before 1900 so that the decision makers had not only all the information but all the sideboards that might affect decisions.

As I remember, most of our (WDF) decisions were made based on an evaluation of the current numbers almost entirely.

Had a call from a friend about the weather forecast. Had not looked at it since the famous storm that was not a storm a bit back. After this little stormy weather today Sept is upper 60s no rain of any measure. Oct is mostly dry some light showers which does not look good. https://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/rfc/ So I looked at another source for Nov and some rain but not a river bouncer until mid month. I never go for long term forecast by the days as it is seldom correct. That said it lets one look at trends and damn this is not a good fall trend or maybe it is. One thing for sure nothing that would jump flows is on its way. Average temperatures continue the trending down.

The bad thing with a drier Fall is if that persists through spawning then the reds will be concentrated and really subject to scour if and when we get a good freshet.

That is another problem that drier falls give us for the fish that spawning in the fall. Concentrates the spawners in a the thalweg and a good high flow will chew up there first.

Well, I thought I could beat the drought by heading north a bit, where they got more rain. I found fish, for sure, but they were the tightest-lipped fish I have ever suffered. Fish, fish everywhere, but nary a bite to be had. Hard to win right now for the bank-bound river angler. For sure, the nets will gobble up a lot next week. We can hope the future rains come when they're not fishing (or for blowouts when they are scheduled to be fishing). That's about the best we've got now.

I feel very fortunate to have encountered some moving fish on the Lower Satsop a little over a week ago while fishing for whatever. I had to release everything I landed, but it was a ton of fun. I had high hopes for a great season, but now, it looks like the nets will take the vast majority of the early-timed run, and it's going to be another hope to get lucky after a rain event in November kind of year. We can also hope for the weather predictions to be horribly wrong, which definitely is a possibility. Do the rain dance...

Nets go in today. The fishing from the bank at Aberdeen was very slow yesterday (I calculated a CPUE of about one fish for every 15 rod hours during the 3 or so hours I was there). Obviously, that fishery is very inconsistent, and a slow spinner bite doesn't necessarily indicate low numbers of fish (we all know tidal coho can be notoriously poor biters), but I didn't see many nets flying in the boats, and the seals weren't doing very well either. The fish I saw caught were very small. We're talking 3-4 pounds; just barely big enough to be called adults.

Of course, my personal anecdotes ought not be extrapolated out as indicators of any fishery; I am only one person, fishing in one location at a time. I hope others saw more encouraging signs than I did yesterday. I did hear a positive report from the bay, so that's something. I started out very hopeful we were going to have a good year in the tribs, but with each weather system that has fizzled out, I'm seeing shades more and more similar to how things went down a couple years ago, when they shut down the tribs until the rain finally came in late October.

We'll see how the nets do. A bit ironically, I'm hoping they get enough to prevent WDFW from declaring any "emergencies." Mostly, I'd just like some assurance that something is out there, even if not much gets above the nets before the first brown-out as a result.

Good luck out there, whether you use a rod or a net....

I'm sure WDFW will shut the tribs down.. i haven't seen much this last couple weeks to say fishing is good.. Hope the warm water has them off the bite and they r just moving up.

I had to wait for today’s outgoing tide to get a good view of how fishing was for the QIN, in a word terrible! I watched two full outgoing drifts and nothing. Sealions were around but did not even follow the nets. The forecast for combined hatchery and wild coho was 111k and change. The coho run timing appears to be normal as to timing but the numbers that should be much greater for a 111k+ forecast. So now the question is just what is going on. Large run forecast don’t just jump to any week but rather increase from the start to middle to the end. A 111K+ forecast does not look like this! In fact this looks like one way way below expectations. Time will tell but bottom line not a lot coming up river it is likely to be slim pickings for a bit.

Ugh. I was planning to wait until Saturday to go fishing (a little rain coming Friday with nets out), but if what Rivrguy is seeing doesn't change before the nets get pulled, we might be shut down before the weekend. Thinking I had better get out there some evening very soon. I expect to get skunked, but I at least need to give it a go before it closes.

I do wonder what's going on. All indications were good for a strong run, right up until it was supposed to arrive. I've also seen a lot of very small fish among what I've seen caught, which makes me wonder if they ran out of food off the coast or something else ocean-related is happening. Finally, I'm concerned that I haven't seen any chinook so far. I don't target them and rarely catch them, but usually, by September, you can see kings flipping around in the deeper holes along the lower tribs, and I haven't seen any I can recall so far.

Well, for now we wait.

I am with you on Chinook as I normally see them rolling and whatever around the house and zip nada nothing. From what I know the fish coming are simply moving right up not hanging out or staging around tidewater. Smaller coho always show early on but I know of nice sized fish caught also. Now the Chinook thing ..................