A friend of who was a tribal member used to say "the Nation plays hardball WDFW plays T ball".

“We understand this closure has brought hardship to our tribal fishermen and their families, but as stewards of our salmon for today and future generations, it’s the right thing to do,” said Quinault Indian Nation President Guy Capoeman.

Lol, the hardship was that they were getting .75/LB or something like that. They were all bitching about the prices. Pretty easy to shut down when you're not recouping gas and beer money.

what hardship?? they still get money from the gov't and their casino.. clamming and other seafood..

What's before T-ball???

11/16/2023


I am really surprised that WDFW didn't "go to a "hatchery only" Coho take, when they changed the limit to 1 fish........ makes me scratch my head at what WDFW does in making rule changes....... grrrrrrrrrrr

What amazes me about WDFW is that I thought humans needed to breathe oxygen and not methane to survive. Learn something new every day.

Plus, going to hatchery only would have cut out the commercials....

Keep in mind this is a news report ( follow Doc's link to listen to the recording ) and not the actual letter. First they both screwed up so both commercial entities had to fish together which the QIN had always said was not possible. Then the Rec three bag limit on the Satsop. Then the one fish bag limit on Satsop. Qin shut down their season in the middle of all this and are asking to shut down the Rec season. Frankly it looks like they are taking turns poking each other in the eye!

Get ready for a rec closure real soon.

i figure either today they will announce the closer to take place on Monday or Monday and close by t-day..

Fair to assume no fishing for the coast until memorial day?

Thats probably the result. Close on the 1st, for all fishing. Of course, the tribe will still fish the Quinault, Queets, Salmon, and possibly the quillaute, with no restricts. I doubt they give a rip about netting steelhead else where as the numbers do no really make it feasible.

The real interesting thing, is that all the rivers with no tribal influence will stay open-that is too say all rivers south of Grays Harbor.

I've seen no mention of the Quillayute and Hoh, so I suppose they'll still be open? Not that I'm going to make that drive more than once or twice, but it would be nice to know that's still there....

My money is on Forks area rivers, Hoh, and Willapa Bay rivers open for Winter Steelhead. Same as last year minus the 15 days in December on Grays Harbor/Chehalis tribs, due to Coho numbers.

it makes sense to them to stop gillnetting when they are getting less than a dollar a pound for the fish, claim hardship, and get a big check from uncle sam.

Spot on F4B. I had the same thoughts. I heard FED money will be on its way to them. How can the QIN say that they stopped netting to save the wild fish when everybody knows that "a fish is a fish to them" whether it be wild or hatchery? Complete BS.

Right. You can't have it both ways... unless you happen to be a Washington treaty tribe, in which case you can have it as many ways as you like. It's like they have a See and Say that spits out excuses for closing non-tribal fisheries when you pull the string. I imagine the voice tracks sounding something like Tonto, with a steady beat on the tom-toms in the background....

To be a little fair, the Tribal fishers did get screwed over by the glutted market, and it was entirely non-tribal fishers and retailers that created that market. From that angle, I'm good with them getting hardship money. That said, we (and the salmon) could do without all the guilt trips and Draconian "requests" to close our fisheries when they can't sufficiently profit from theirs. Indeed, I think the truth would have been a much more compelling (and potentially productive) case for them to make. That the market crashed the way it did proves that too many fish were taken in last year's non-tribal commercial fisheries. Sounds like solid justification for the Tribes to seek reductions in those fisheries, to ensure less waste of precious salmon and reasonable ex-vessel prices for all fishers. Instead, of course, they borrowed that favorite page from WDFW's playbook and put the burden squarely on the in-river recs. Such BS, and a wasted opportunity to make real, positive change to boot.

Can anybody here find it in their hearts to thank WDFW for not immediately caving to QIN's pressure campaign to shut the in-river rec's down? I am grateful, even if it was out of complete ineptitude, at least I can go and catch and release a dark coho tomorrow. I mean, they are really turning the heat up. The article in this morning's Seattle Times is a gem. Feel free to hit the comments section there,
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The fish coming up river now are chromers nothing dark about them. Here is the article:

By Isabella Breda
Seattle Times staff reporter

Quinault Nation shuttered its fall coho fishery a month early this year after harvest numbers came in at just a fraction of what was expected. Now, fishery leaders have called on the state to do the same.

“It’s our way of life, and these days, it’s a source of income as well,” said Cleve Jackson, a policy representative for Quinault Fisheries. “Our people would fish no matter what: to eat, to feed their soul.”

But the state Department of Fish and Wildlife pushed back on these requests from the Quinault. In a Thursday letter, the state cited levels of returning natural spawning coho above the 10-year average to date in one tributary of the Chehalis River.

They acknowledged depleted natural returns of coho in other coastal systems and ultimately pointed to a lack of “technical tools available that would inform our shared decision making,” as state and tribal co-managers of the fisheries.

The tribal nation was anticipating to harvest more than 50,000 coho salmon from the coast, coastal rivers and streams. Three weeks in, they came up with fewer than 10,000 fish.

Quinault Fisheries leaders worry there are more “paper fish” than fish running up the rivers and fear the fishery is not being managed for future generations. “I work for the nation, but I also work for the ones that can’t speak for themselves,” Jackson said. “If there is no salmon, then there’s no kʷínayɬ [Quinault people].”

After several years in the ocean, migrating as far as 1,000 miles to feed and grow, coho return to their birth streams and tributaries, guided by their snout. The fish often gather or hold at the mouth of the river and wait for rain to raise streamflows before heading to their spawning grounds. They begin to turn deep burgundy as they ripen, with the males growing a hooked noses and big teeth.

These coastal coho runs, like other oceangoing fish across the state, took a hit from the warm water “blob” that parked itself off the West Coast about a decade ago. The blob — driven by a long-lasting high-pressure ridge — appeared in 2013. It’s part of a larger pattern that led to low snowpack, drought and depleted marine nutrient levels.

Since the blob was documented as a primary contributing factor to the downturn in coho production in 2015, the stock has struggled to recover, according to Quinault Fisheries.

The number of tools available to fishery managers to conserve runs is shrinking as climate change adds a layer of threats on already struggling salmon.

Ashley Nichole Lewis, a member of the Quinault Nation and a fishing guide, said she’s watched the warming waters — sometimes reaching lethal temperatures — and late-season rains force the salmon to change their behavior.

“We very much respect the science, but the traditional knowledge suggests conserving now is going to set us up for a future that we want,” Lewis said. “Our village is currently being relocated to a higher ground because of climate change, and we feel the impacts of climate change on many levels. Our fish are certainly feeling it also.”

As glaciers, like those that feed the Queets River, recede, some rivers will be further choked off from access to sufficient, cool flows.

Large marine heat waves in the North Pacific have occurred each of the past four years, typically beginning offshore in the spring and moving to the West Coast in the fall, before retreating in the winter.

These were among the largest heat waves on record for the eastern North Pacific since monitoring began in 1982.

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In the Queets River, only in one of the last eight years have the runs achieved the escapement goal, or the number of salmon that “escape” harvest and return to the river or hatchery to spawn and sustain the population.

The natural coho stock in the Queets is currently under a rebuilding plan through the Pacific Fisheries Management Council after being designated “overfished” in 2018 when spawning escapement levels dropped below the minimum threshold.

Last fall, amid Western Washington’s driest recorded June to October, salmon crossed their fins as long as they could before fighting their way upstream, many relegated to the lowest reaches of the river without sufficient water to help carry them to their prime spawning habitat.

It not only changed how the salmon spawned but prompted state, tribal and federal officials to close some fisheries, concerned about the number of fish that could successfully spawn.

“We’re facing climate and continued population growth and habitat degradation,” said Jackson, the Quinault fisheries policy representative. “We have to do this. We have been taking this more precautionary approach because of those things.”

Isabella Breda: 206-652-6536 or ibreda@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @BredaIsabella. Seattle Times staff reporter Isabella Breda covers the environment.

As nI understand it, that State at QIN and other Tribe's insistence, has gone away from in season management. They say the lack the tools. BS. They used to have them. There is no reason why they can't do daily inseam monitoring and modeling except they have agreed not to.

In-season management carries risks in that fisheries may need to close rather than follow the preseason plan. This still doesn't help in-river and everybody is in line ahead of them but it does put numbers out there.

Heck, even I found a bright coho today. Granted, it took me about 4 hours of fishing, but I finally found one. Another hatchery hen... all I seem to be catching this year. This one was small, too. Maybe 4 lbs.

Are the fish in the Satsop (I assume that's where the best numbers are) big, wild ones, or are they dinky hatchery fish like what I was delighted to catch today?

I've heard lots of accounts of small, bright coho being caught in the tribs. I guess I'm wondering if the small size of the fresh fish moving now may be an indicator that the ocean ran out of food or was somehow otherwise inhospitable during the time the wild B runs are usually fattening up in the nearshore areas....