R&G,

Thank you for your provocative response. I agree with all the examples you list. Some of those issues are fixable, some less so. I keep hoping that some one on the Commission will see the light, but continue to be disappointed.(I look at the Willamette steelhead success when since sea lions have been more controlled as an example of what could be done) Politics continue to be the with biggest hurdle, maybe surpassing bad management. Regaining habitat is good, but we can't "get there" with our limited habitat. Sport anglers continue to be stupid and dis organized (sorry to say that). If each steelheader would contribute the cost of one breakfast, about fifteen bucks, we could have a war chest of around three million dollars to hire lobbyists, contribute to campaigns, sue those who need to be sued, etc. But we won't get together. PSA disagrees with CCA, Trout Unlimited left the planet years ago, small groups contradict those who are better prepared, etc. And our Commission system is not accountable to the citizenry.

C&r’d fish produce less ? Wow, best get those fly flogging crowds on the Yakima to quit fishing perhaps. And not to forget the Madison, Jefferson, the Ruby and more. And stop the Experimental c&r efforts on the Skagit.

And how is it that the folks to our immediate north still get to bang on the black mouth, I mean “Winter Spring kings” in the straits, but no one else to the south. Lotsa hatchery fish in that catch outta Victoria to be sure.

Asking for a friend.

It's C&R on close to spawning fish. Resident trout, especially the spring spawners, have all winter and early spring to recover. They are seeing issues in New Zealand, though, with C&R Browns. It does take some serious looking into.

The Canadians fish because they don't have the catch sharing with US tribes while we do down here. Buy a Canadian license and go fish up there. Or Alaska.

Up there is the Staits between the two countries. Almost the same waters from the blackmouth’s POV.

Of course it is. But they are accounted differently by the bean counters. Which is why AK hammers our Chinook.

I know there was an issue with water quality in Percival cove. I believe that was where most of the blackmouth came from if I recall correctly.
Weren't they also concerned with straying? Regardless, that program wherever the fish came from provided a lot of fun and opportunity.
I wonder if there is a chance to revive the blackmouth program once they finish the proposed Capitol lake rehab project?
SF

Capital lake once had drag boat races, then hydroplane races, great salmon fishing, and tons of fish.

It was a clean free flowing area back before the Evergreen State Collage hippies decided it should become a worthless swamp.

There used to be a guy that would fish Capitol lake who only had one arm.
I remember seeing him catch big kings.
I also saw some steelhead caught by the old brewery back in the day. Never caught any there myself.
SF

The Deschutes upstream from the brewery provided some good steelhead plunking. way bac when. There was at one time a holding pond quite a ways upstream. I also heard that there were egg boxes. WDFW quit planting steelhead in it some time ago. WDFW is good at quitting programs. Many years ago old Game released cutthroat into the system just prior to the trout opening in late May. Small planters, but many came back later as beautiful large trout.

Capitol Lake was mostly over with before I arrived in the area in 1999. I do remember a co-worker bringing in a bronzed-up king he had caught somewhere near the highway bridge and being kind of impressed circa 2002. Probably a mid-20s fish, and for all I knew at the time, it was quite the trophy. We have lost a lot, even since folks like me showed up around the turn of the century.

I guess the decision has been made to return Capitol Lake to its original state as a natural estuary. Not sure I'll get to see the finished restoration in my lifetime, but I'm glad there is intent to restore the flushing capacity the Deschutes drainage once provided to the South Sound. It was never an anadromous fish factory (the falls are a natural barrier), but it's good to know the plan is to restore the estuary. Hopefully, the South Sound will be cleaner a few years down the road, and that could only help fisheries at points north.

Explain to me how the Deschutes will now flush the Sound better. That is a flow-through lake. What comes in goes right out. Making the estuary won't get you any more flow unless there are diversions in the lake I am unaware of. Same volume of river water will enter Budd; just now at the base of the Falls instead of at the bridge.

The 5th Avenue Dam and Bridge removal will restore tidal exchange and a new bridge will be constructed with vehicle, bicycle, and pedestrian lanes. Restoration of the Deschutes Estuary will improve ecological conditions, achieve state water quality standards, improve climate resilience, and restore recreational water access and fishing.

https://deschutesestuaryproject.org/

That doesn't answer my question about how the estuary restoration will allow the Deschutes to flush more. It will flush the area now acting as a lake. What removal of the lake will do is put significantly more nutrients now captured by lake plants and send those nutrients to the inlet for capture by marine algae; we'll have more algae in the Inlet in the summer.

I could certainly be wrong, but the dam which is actually a tidal gate restricts things as it isn’t very wide as I recall the last time being down there watching kings come up. I’d think removing and widening the lake exit to the sound would allow more water movement both ways through the area, especially during high water events and king tides. Maybe not….
After Olympia flooded last year on a 18’+ king tide, I wonder if they’ve factored that into their plans.
If they do this, it will be interesting to also see what changes occur to the beach around the estuary. It’s kind of an ugly area right now.
SF

Was he a plumber named Rich?

Yup and yup.

I never knew his name. Just saw him fishing there a lot.
His arm was missing at about the elbow or so.
He’d stick the rod butt up in his armpit while fighting the fish.
SF

Taking the dam out and widening the opening may allow more water into the lake/estuary area but the amount of freshwater won't change so I suspect that velocity around where the dam is will actually lower over most of the tidal cycle which will allow greater sediment deposition.

From a nutrient standpoint, the Inlet will now deal with the N and P which the lake used to capture in summer.

Thinking of the past, I'm reading Enos Bradner's "Northwest Angling" published in 1950. Wow! Salmon and steelhead fishing was good nearly everywhere then, and the state was just beginning to tinker with raising hatchery steelhead. So when anglers caught steelhead, and they surely did, they were wild fish, and they killed them. Did that adversely affect the steelhead populations? I'll take the chance and say no. It didn't affect the runs because there were still enough uncaught steelhead to escape and spawn. The reason I'm confident in saying that is because the human population of WA was only a little more than 2 million, compared to nearly 8 million today. And although habitat was being degraded and destroyed at a rapid pace, there was a lot more and better quality than remains today.

It remains popular to blame over fishing in years past for the small steelhead populations of today. That is mis-guided thinking. Over fishing of wild steelhead more likely than not occurred from about the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. And the over fishing that did occur was to the early winter wild steelhead whose run timing overlapped with the hatchery winter steelhead that became abundant from the late 1950s through the 1960s. Sport fishing may have contributed to that over fishing beginning in the mid to late 1960s. Then adding the treaty Indian fishing that began in earnest in 1974, over fishing of early timed wild steelhead that were mixed in with the December - January hatchery steelhead was all but certain. And it kinda' remains that way to this day, where wild winter steelhead populations are concentrated in the latter part of the run. However, a slight but noticeable increase in the proportion of early timed wild steelhead in occurring due to wild steelhead release regulations and just plain river closures.

Wild steelhead, like most salmonids, are resilient fish. Meaning that populations bounce back readily from sudden declines. Wild runs that were reduced in the 1970s very readily bounced back in the 1980s, due largely to more restrictive fishing regulations, both sport and treaty. The "recent" downward trend in steelhead runs began around 1990 or so. And it had and has nothing to do with fishing, since fishing regulations have protected spawning escapements. Early marine survival has crashed, due in large part of increases in predation on smolts. And open ocean survival has declined for reasons known and probably unknown. And that ocean productivity appears to vary widely.

For the reasons listed above, I've made the argument over the past few years when anglers are complaining about WDFW steelhead mismanagement that if all steelhead fishing coastwide, sport, commercial, treaty, everything had been completely shut down since 1980, wild steelhead populations in all WA rivers would be just about exactly what we have observed in all these recent years. Total escapements may have been slightly higher in some cases where incidental harvest or other mortalities have occurred. But in general, wild steelhead runsizes would be just about exactly what we have seen with the likely exception of the Queets and Quinault Rivers due to the Quinault Tribe's management policies (i.e., hatchery and wild fish are the same). While this has been a "back of the envelope" calculation, from all the runsize and catch data I have seen, it should be a reasonable accurate assessment of the situation.

Catch and release (CNR) seasons do affect wild steelhead escapements in terms of incidental mortality. A conservative estimate of 10% is used and more than covers the estimates of actual population loss. And CNR still doesn't adversely affect subsequent run sizes. How do we know this? Because, in general, when larger than average spawning escapements occur, the subsequent run size 4 years later (or you can figure in the various cohort ages and get no significant difference) is nearly always smaller than that large brood year escapement. If the habitat were under-escaped, those resulting run sizes should be larger as more of the available habitat would be used. That not being the case, the most logical conclusion is that most rivers are being used at their contemporary carrying capacity for the species, even though the ESA recovery population goals are quite a bit larger (which is one of the reasons ESA "recovery" will not be achieved.).

The south sound's Deschutes River and Capitol Lake are what you get from the highest quality lip service. The Deschutes River has a natural barrier just upstream of its historical junction with Puget Sound. It has no natural anadromous fish runs except for the naturally occurring sea run cutthroat trout. The Deschutes watershed is naturally infested with nanophytes, a parisite of fish. Consequently no natural runs of Chinook or coho salmon or steelhead have developed there even though the barrier falls was laddered by WDF in about 1956. The native cutthroat trout have developed some resistance to nanophytes, and since fish passage was installed, the river now hosts a decent population of both resident and sea run cutthroat, for a degraded watershed, that is. The headwaters of the Deschutes are in Weyerhauser's Vail tree farm. I think the last of the old growth timber was finally harvested in the 1970s. The usual logging practices, along with runoff of some farms in the watershed, are the source of the sediment that has filled Capitol Lake several times.

The amount of sediment coming downstream should be decreasing as a result of the Timber, Fish, & Wildlife agreement of 1988 and the Forest & Fish settlement of the early 2000s. But it will likely persist at some rate as long as forestry is practiced in the watershed. To be fair to Weyerhauser, I should add that the sediment rates would likely be higher if the forest land were converted to other land uses. Something to keep in mind. When I was in high school we could swim and water ski in Capitol Lake. Now that would be dangerous due to poor water quality and not being deep enough for boat traffic. Restoring the estuary, if it ever happens, will most likely improve the water quality due to daily tidal flushing. But I don't expect it to make a whit of difference to the fish populations there. The native cutthroats will keep doing their thing, and the hatchery Chinook will continue for as long as WDFW continues with the hatchery program.

When I was young and didn't know any better, we would occasionally fish for returning Chinook by the old footbridge that long ago washed out near the river mouth. They were always dark fish, since I don't think they pass upstream of the 5th Ave. dam until they begin to color up. It was fun entertainment until I learned of places to fish for salmon that were suitable for eating. I fished for cutthroat, not knowing the difference between resident and sea run, only that they were either large or small. In the 1960s, WDG would plant rainbow trout near the Weyerhauser day use park by the Military Road bridge (it's a housing development for the last several decades). I would wade down the river fishing from there to the Silver Spring Ranch, and that is where I learned to tell rainbow trout from cutthroat trout. While I'm reminiscing, that's also when I learned that keeping a limit of trout (12) was a waste because my mom always over cooked fish. That may be what first got me into catch and release fishing, now that I think about it.

Unfortunately I never fished the Deschutes during the years that WDG or WDFW stocked hatchery steelhead in it. I have had a couple neighbors report that they enjoyed some decent fishing there along the old Olympia Brewery and golf course area when the runs were relatively decent (the 70s and 80s).

From what I gather, removing the 5th Ave. dam will allow the Deschutes River sediment to deposit in the west Olympia boat basin. Since boat owners are community movers and shakers, it appears that the cost of sediment removal will be born by city and county taxpayers (yea!). How cool is that?