The sad environmental situation is this: For more than sixty years the Deschutes had a salmon run that produced naturally spawning salmon, permitted by fish ladders. The natural spawning run created a healthy ecosystem for many miles upstream until it was blocked by the falls near Weyerhaeuser country. Bears, birds, streamside foliage, salmonids and many other critters thrived in an agri/wilderness environment. HPA enforcement was vigorous to protect salmon, etc. Now the Chinook run does not exist above salmon spawning structure! WDFW a few years ago decided to kill any component of a natural producing run, disregarding the ecosystem health. Now all surplus salmon are sold, mostly for catfood or fertilizer. Despite this, the river is OPEN to salmon fishing without salmon in it to be harvested! Talking out of both sieds of its bureaucratic mouth about creating opportunity, WDFW contradicts its own policy. Male chinook should be let upstream to maintain the ecosystem, and provide recreational fishing. There is no conservation needed. This wouldn't hurt anyone and the Squaxins coulld still maintain their fishery on hatchery stock.

I see no reason why there isn't a major annual plant of steelhead into the Deschutes. There are no native steelhead to interbreed with, the hatchery stocks tend to be reproductively incompetent anyway, and it would allow for a nice walk and wade fishery. I know of a number of filks who did quite well back when there were steelhead stocked. Just WDFW lip service to anglers.

I caught one of my first steelhead on the Deschutes, at the HWY 507 bridge. I was headed to the skookum chuck and stopped to take a look. I a one move around, so I walked down with some chum eggs and ended up catching him a few casts later. Never saw another one since. That year I did real well on the skookumchuck. On day I drove over during a downpour. The river was completely wiped out below bloody run. I got out and saw that the creek was blown out, but the last 1/4 mile or so to the dam was actually low and clear. no one else appeared to have bothered to go up that far to take a look. I had no idea what I was doing, but hooked and lost several on the big bend hole. Took a look and realized my line was frayed all the was down. As I was trying to strip some off, another guy walked in and tossed out some eggs. I could see he was immediately snagged up, but didn't say anything. After about 30 seconds, one came up and grabbed the eggs and took off. Presentation didn't seem to matter as the hole was plugged. Next time down there was an older gentle man plunking that hole. I hooked one there and then walked up to the next hole and got my second one and was done in about 20 minutes. The older man had one on the bank when I walked back down. I later heard he got his second, went home, got his wife, came back and helped her hook her limit. Good memories for sure. It's a joke now.

Spent many hours fishing the upper Deschutes around 1980. Caught 5 one day. Still have pics.
The wolf haven nut job used to keep his wolves in the woods above Henderson Blvd when he first arrived in the area.
What a pile.

Fish quality aside, I still don't understand why we can't have an urban fishery on the Deschutes kings. They stack up by the thousands at the mouth, or at least they did before the dam was opened up. I've never seen a reason why you shouldn't be able to fish for them down in front of Bayview.

I used to fish at Tumwater falls park a lot when I lived downtown, it was a great way to kill a spare 20 minutes. Tossing a #5 vibrax would usually get me into a fish within about 5 casts, then the school would spook and shut down for a while. Usually a bit easier to get them to bite eggs after that.

Capitol lake has been closed since 2009 due to the nebulous New Zealand mud snail threat. But other waterways in the state have them as well, and they aren't shut down. The cynical side of me thinks they were traded away at NOF for ocean impacts.

Just look at the rotonda on the hump above the lake.
Looks like an upside-down toilet bowl.

The chit ran down the hill into the lake.

I was floating the Nisqually one morning, fishing the drift where Muck Creek dumped in. Heard the helicopter coming up river. It comes around the corner just above the water, takes a turn right over the top of me and lands on the gravel bar. I thought I was in trouble for something or ?. My heart was pounding.
It lands, the door quickly slides open and a soldier jumps out and starts puking on the gravel bar. The other guys on board where all laughing at him. He finished puking, they loaded up, waved at us and took off.
Miss the Nisqually spring days. Put my father in law and young son on a fish the last day it was open for steelhead. Didn't know then it was the last one I'd ever catch there.

The short, and probably Agency-Approved answer, is that the NI share is already taken "outside". To pass share inside would mean a reduction in PS and ocean fisheries; at least on paper.

The second might be a concern for a disorderly and snag fishery. Since there is regularly a surplus at the hatchery it seems some sort of fishery is appropriate.

Its always interesting to look at the fall chinook hatchery escapement reports at the end of the year compared to the measly quotas and seasons some Puget Sound marine areas now get each year. The Deschutes was just under 10K this year.
I've been cleaning out my desk at work for retirement and found a bunch of past steelhead harvest and plants info. Damn depressing......
SF

Tug,

While the Deschutes did, and still does, produce a lot of salmon, very few of them were naturally produced. Although thousands of returning hatchery Chinook were allowed upstream to spawn, very few viable smolts resulted, considering the number of spawners. Nanophytes, the parasite that I mentioned in my post above, kills most of the juveniles before they make it to salt water. But since some number greater than zero may survive, WDFW chooses to not let any returning adults go upstream to spawn because those would become ESA protected "wild" Chinook. Crazy, yeah, but that's the way things are set up. WDFW had to go through a lot to avoid having the Deschutes included in the ESA-listed Puget Sound Chinook unit.

I agree with you that sending those Chinook upstream is an environmental benefit, but WDFW may not wish to establish a precedent of allocating salmon to environmental benefits. It could conflict with harvest management priorities.

C'man,

I think the reason the Department discontinued stocking steelhead is because the SAR - smolt to adult return rate was too low to sustain even hatchery production. I think the fish came from Chambers Ck - S. Tacoma, where the adult returns were no longer enough to even sustain the hatchery run that started it all. Pretty sad, because if the rate of return were comparable to the 1980s, it would be a perfect hatchery river with no ESA conflicts.

Chum Man,

WDFW could allow fishing there and in the approach waters that have been closed for a while now. There are some bright Chinook when they first show up. Now that fishery is exclusively for seals when the Chinook are stacked up in there. Share allocations aside, it's hard to argue that a lot of fish that are produced solely to be harvested are deliberately being wasted by the state.

Back in the day when the Deschutes had steelhead and real men wore hip boots.

To put some results onto Salmo's comment about Chinook in the Deschutes, WDFW did a study there where passed a lot of adults to see the returns. The unmarked returns were so few in number that they easily could have been "drops"; hatchery fish that were not marked in the mass-marking process.

For quite a while, the Deschuites was one of the wild coho index streams for PS. Smolts were trapped, adults enumerated, etc. I think that when the Deep SS survival issue for yearling smolts surfaced the run petered out. The system could produce coho returns but not Chinook.