Wild Chrome

Got to hand it to you Wild Chrome, you are one heck of a fisherman. You get out so much, and are so proficient at what you do, you can feed not only your whole family, but your co-workers and friends as well!!! (Probably fill the local food bank TOO!!)

I must not get out as much or fish as well as a master such as yourself. So what is your point?

All I am saying is that the few times I do get out each yearI would like to BONK the fish I boat.

I think they all fight great, and sound the same when you BONK them.

Bob All 3

So what the masses want doesn't matter? Where the heck did you come up with that? If that is the case we need to make some radical changes. What those are I don't know.

Ijust want more fish for everyone to BONK!

BOSSMAN

All of my fees now go into the general fund. What a crock!!!! These fees should be for fish and game enhancement. Perhaps then we would funds available for all of the hatcheries I would like to build. BONK ON DUDE!!!!

Boss Man

Do you honestly think a river supported by no hatcheries, just naturally reproducing fish,
could ever support a BONKING fishery?? I don't think so, because we don't have any of those any more.

Lets all just BONK together.

Sirbonkalot,

You are totally lost. You dont see the big picture. All you see it as is a resource to take from and you most likely dont care if that yeild ends with you.

There is so much beauty in the native fish. If you took the time to really think about it you might really see things how they are.

Next time you catch a wild steelhead hold him buy the tail on his side at the rivers edge with his body just submerged and watch him breath. Look in his eye. He will be totally relaxed and healthy. Just look at his beauty and think about his life history and what he had to go through to make it to where he is now. Think about the odds off his survival. Actually take the time to do this and you might see the wild steelhead for what it really is. And when you turn him upright he will bolt out of your grasp without any reviveing back into the dark green to finish his lifecycle.

It is much more rewarding than beating thant awsome fish on the head.

If you do this and dont see the big picture than you dont deserve to catch these magnificient native fish.

siebonkalot=SELFISH HOW MANY TIMES YOU GOING TO CHANGE YOUR NAME?WERN'T YOU RD OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT A WEEK AGO?!

WISHINIWASFISHIN=SEFISH

Sirbonkalot,
I'm not God's gift to steelhead fishing, just an avid, experienced angler who fishes once or twice a week. I'd share info with you on where and how to catch some truly big, hot (wild) steelhead in the northwest, but I'd be afraid that you'd bonk them.

RICH G

That was butal, I am still realling from the sting.

I would never BONK a WILD/NATIVE fish (unless legal to do so), and I hope for thier survival for all of eternity. I am saying that the fish that swam the rivers 100 years ago are gone. What we ( and I ) call NATIVE/WILD is really just a naturally spwning fish from whatever stock. I am glad for naturally spawning fish, and yes, you are correct, it magnificent that the fish has returned, Hopefully to go back to sea, and by some miricle return again.

When I do some BONKING, it is always legal begal. I have even let BONKABLE fish go on occasion.
To BONK, or not to BONK, that is the question.

I am saying I like to BONK, and it is the hatchery stock we get to BONK. So lets not only keep on making them, but lets make MORE.

ltlCLEO

I am not selfish. I want everyone to be able to BONK fish. The more BONKABLE fish in the river the better it is for everyone from the tackle stores to the guides. Everyone profits when there is a whole lot of BONKING going on.

Wild Chrome

Thanks for the offer. I assure you I wouldn't BONK any of those HOT WILD fish. I really envy a guy who can get out a couple of times a week. You are a STUD! My wife is not that understanding... WAHHHHH!! BONK ON.

But you want to sacrifice all wild fish so that you can show off?

lilCLEO

BONKING fish is not showing off. It is good clean fun! How am I scrificing the naturally spwning fish.
It is my contention that the truely wild fish is gone!

Again, If you can't fish, does it matter that there are any fish?

Do you think we would be fishing the snohomish system if the hatcheries at Rieter, the Wallace, and Tokal Creek? To bad we don't have one on the Pilchuck, and the Tolt. Now we are talking about some serious BONKING.

I just want to go for the BONKING GOLD>>>>>and hit the triple BONK.

Sirbonkalot

On the no wild steelhead left issue you are absolutely wrong. There is no evidence to support such an opinion. Contrary to your OPINION the studies that have been completed show very little reproduction by hatchery steelhead in the wild. The studies that have been done that showed some success measured the survival of thoes fish only to the smolt stage. There is no evidence to suggest that there are any wild populations as the result of normal hatchery practices nor that there have been any. These so called "first generation wild fish sinply do not exsist. Nearly all the wild steelhead we have today are the result of two wild parents spawning together.
I challenge you to provide some evidence to back up your position. You do that and I will do the same for my position.

I am not against hatcherys and I am not against killing a hatch fish and if the population of the wa state was half what it is now I would not be against killing nates.
Your willingness to sacrifice the wild fish so you can bonk fish is where I lose ya.There is nothing to stop ya from catching and bonking hatch brats now!
As for you thinking there are no wild fish tells me alot about you.

to all,
A fishery that should be followed to the end, exsists only in NW British Columbia. The skeena river has several things going for it........

1. Wild steelhead release
2. Great fish runs salmon, steelhead and so on
3. No hatchery's at all!
4. Here is one of the most important keys.....

The water that drains into those rivers has never run across any major metro street. If you look at most of the rivers that are in trouble here in the NW it is because of influence outside of mother nature. If we don't mess with her, she won't mess with us.

there is an awesome run of spring salmon in the skeena system that is all native. It has been producing 30 fish days for lots of guys for years. But you can't keep those fish. that is why they are such healthy runs. Same applies to Skeena steelhead and it's tributary's. There is only two fisheries that you may kill fish in the whole stytem. Fall chinook, which run size is in the millions of kings, that's right, MILLIONS, and the sockey, witch as of the last few years has just opened becauce it's run size is in the millions.

Because we have so many Damms on our rivers, we can only dream of these type of runs. We choose to live it major metropoatin areas where the fish eventually will not make it, Hatcheries or not! We need better water sheds for these fish to survive. NO OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE AT ALL. Fish did so well here 100's of years ago when we were not here in such great numbers.

The Skeena also benefits from no in river netting and no ocean coho fishery for the past few years.Doesn't BC also limit the amount of anglers on certain rivers too?

bodysurf

your right about reduced netting however I do believe that the tribes still harvest some fish. However the number of anglers is not limited anywhere on the skeena system. The only regulations to that effect are that on certain streams non-residents cannot fish on weekends.
The only river I know of that has a limited entry system is the Dean. There may be others but I am not aware of them.

SirBonk,
I will agree that there are some rivers where the genetics of the fish are likely not what they were before hatchery brats "invaded". Therefore, one could argue that those rivers don't have original native stock. However, if I took you for a week of march native fishing on the Oregon coast rivers that I fish every year, you'd see that each river still produces its own unique run of native steelhead. The Nehalem river natives arrive early and are big,thich-shouldered, colorful brutes. The Kilchis river natives are varied in size and are very shy for wild steelhead. The Trask river fish are mostly small, seem to arrive all at once, and are extremely aggressive. The Wilson has an early run of large natives that spawns high in the system and a later run of smaller natives that spawns in the lower river.
Each river has native fish with very unique characteristics. Getting to learn each different river and each population of steelhead produced over thousands of years by the varying conditions that exist in each river is, to me, the best part of fishing for steelhead.
Hatchery fish, to me, are mostly all the same river to river. Even the wild broodstock hatchery fish are more like generic/inbred hatchery brats than true wild steelhead. Rarely does any hatchery steelhead I catch fight as well as a native.
If native steelhead were gone, I'd fish for wild trout and give up on their ocean-going cousins. Luckily, we've still got quite a few rivers with nates, so I can still get excited about steelhead this time of year.

There remain native wild steelhead in Washington's coastal, Puget Sound, and even in southwest Washington rivers that are little, or no, different genetically than they were 200 years ago. There has been some hatchery/wild introgression on some rivers, usually among the summer steelhead, but on most west side rivers the rate is so low as not to have been detected in genetic studies. Therefore, if you believe wild native steelhead are worth saving, there are numerous remaining stocks for us to conserve.

As for the notion that we could operate hatcheries on every river and tributary to sate our desire to "bonk," that hypothesis has been demonstrated to be false. Rivers are more than mere conduits for hatchery fish to migrate upstream and downstream in. They have finite carrying capacities, even for hatchery fish; not just for wild fish. It might be a great strategy if it worked, but ultimately it does not.

And regarding funding hatcheries if only our fish and game fees went only into the fish and wildlife budget, pull your head out of the budget darkness. Examine the fish and wildlife budget in full light and you will see that the total budget, and even just the amount spent on state hatcheries is far greater than the amount of money generated by our license fees. If WDFW had to survive on just the fees generated by licenses and such, many, if not most hatcheries in the state would have to close, excepting those paid for by Mitchell Act money or mitigation funds from utility companies.

Can you make a wild steelhead out of a hatchery one? Yes, I believe so. The Cowlitz experiment referred to is a good example. Wild, native steelhead were extirpated from the upper Cowlitz River due to no fish passage facilities or operations for about 30 years. WDFW believes they have maintained the native genetic stock in the "late winters" stock at the Cowlitz trout hatchery. We really don't know exactly what they are, but they're the best we have to work with in the Cowlitz basin. Late winters are spawned at the hatchery, the eggs incubated, and the fry fed a short while prior to being released, scatter planted it's called, throughout the upper river basin above Cowlitz Falls Dam. This scatter planting is done according to a formula developed and observed to be successful in lower B.C.

These hatchery fry rear naturally in the river system, and survive at rates from half to nearly the same as for "wild native" fry as reported by the B.C. authors. This indicates that the people doing the work are doing a good job, and the late winter Cowlitz hatchery stock is suitable for this experiment.

The Cowlitz Falls Dam only collects 40 to 50% of the downstream migrating smolts, but those that are collected and tranferred to the lower river have survived to adult at THREE times the survival rate of Cowlitz hatchery winter steelhead. So this once wild, then hatchery for 30 years, and now "wild" once again genetic strain of steelhead is completing the cycle. As CFM reported, more wild steelhead have returned to the barrier dam fish separator each of the past 4 years. These fish have spawned naturally in the upper Cowlitz River, producing offspring that are - - what? Wild? Native? Hatchery? I think they are wild native steelhead that have a hatchery streak in their bloodline. Big deal. Actually, it is a big deal. People are forever making statements as though the thought therein is absolute. Not so.

Some laws of nature are absolute, like gravity, or the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. But there is a lot of grey and haze as well. There has to be in order for the world to evolve into what it's become, and what it will become.

Wild native fish do better in the wild than hatchery fish. That shouldn't be such a surprise. Did you also know that hatchery fish do better in hatcheries than wild fish? Kind of makes sense when you think about it, doesn't it?

Regarding scientific fact: A fact is empirically verifiable. A scientific fact can be replicated by others to make and observe the same verification.

Pacific Decadal Oscillation: An hypothesis or theory regarding cyclical variation in physical, and influencing biological, processes in the Pacific Ocean. This, or other causes of variation in ocean upwelling and nutrient and subsequent food supplies greatly influences marine survival of all salmon and steelhead stocks that depend on it to grow to maturity. If the 90s was a decade of low ocean productivity, we may now be in a period of higher ocean productivity, and enjoying the benefit of fish runs that exploited that greater food abundance.

Methinks I've written too much on this; ending now.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Thanks Salmo G

Lets hope that we do continue to have high ocean productivity, I would hate however for the various Government agencies to use it as an exuse to do nothing. I think you'd agree that poor ocean conditions are not the causes of salmon/steelhead decline in the NW. We need to be activly protecting and restoring habitat. Without that we will see declines again when poor ocean productivity returns. We need to restore our wild stocks so that they are healthy and abundant enough to survive the next enviromental downturn.
As far as carrying capasity is concerned.. I think that that is something mother nature should decide. Every rime man steps in to control a population of animals they screw it up. The should be the goal of WDFW to return as many wild salmonids to every stream as possible. If we return too many mother nature can deal with the overabundance naturally however there is no option for mother nature if we return too few. I think that WDFW has no clue how many fish should be returning to our streams and that their data on carrying capasity is an uneducated guess.
If small streams in Alaska can have runs in the hundreds of thousands and in fact millions I doubt the carrying capasity of the Skagit is less that 30,000 winter steelhead and likely several million chums coho and chinook.
I guess my point is I think we greatly underestimate what are rivers and our fish are capable of.
I am very happy to hear about the success they are having on the Cowlitz, Unfortunatly the genetic conditions that make it possible are very rare in hatchery stocks. A decade ago WDFW wanted to breed Washougal winter steelhead as a wild broodstock. they sent anglers in the upper reaches of the watershed to collect adults. many fish were caught, none were breed they all tested positive for INH, they had contracted it from the Skamania stock summer runs.
I am all in favor of a hatchery closure but don't start on the Sol Duc Close the Skamania hatchery!! And while were at it lets eliminate the Washougal Chinook production the only thing it breeds is an illegal fishery.
Ok now i have said too much too

Robert,

We seem to agree that wild fish populations are most resilient in coping with environmental change, be it freshwater or ocean productivity cycles. As for WDFW making "uneducated guesses" about carrying capacity, I've met several of the folks who do this, and I've found them to generally be pretty well educated, and their guesses are based on the best data available and assumptions one can make about fish population dynamics. Carrying capacity is determined by nature, and it is greatly influenced by human actions. So it is important to understand it in the relative sense. Fish population carrying capacity these days is considerably less than it was 200 or even 50 years ago. Some groups are advocating restoring wild fish populations to "historic" run sizes. That just isn't going to happen unless we re-locate about 5 million WA state residents.

There is lots of interest in habitat restoration. This is good, but consider that there are limits to that alternative unless we re-locate the 5 million etc.

As for carrying capacity and potential run sizes like 30K steelhead on the Skagit; well the Skagit may have produced wild run sizes like that at one time, or in some highly productive years, but it won't happen again even if WDFW and the tribes ended all target kill fisheries on steelhead and made the escapement goal roughly equal to the run size each year. The limiting factors for the steelhead run seem to be: egg to fry survival, very early juvenile rearing, and ocean survival. In river harvest by treaty and recreational fishing reduces escapement and productivity in some years, but harvest has much less effect on production than the 3 factors I mentioned.

Skagit pink and chum salmon are almost as productive as they can be under present environmental conditions. Escapements tend to be good to excellent, except for odd year chums. Management chooses to believe that since there is a pink/chum interaction that they need not manage for larger odd year chum runs, but data indicate that large odd year chum escapements more often than not produce subsequent large odd year chum returns. So there is an interaction, but it is partly an artifact of management decisions and partly an ecological one. Pink runs can easily surpass a million fish, but not every cycle. The reason is flooding in freshwater and variation in ocean survival. Puget Sound is bacically the southern extent of the natural range of pink salmon. No species is as productive at the limit of its range as it is at the center. Alaskan pinks are and always will be (until global climate change) more productive than Skagit pinks.

Skagit chum can produce run sizes from 80 to 200K, but not millions, for roughly the same reasons as for pinks. And odd year chum runs will be less than even year runs, due to the pink/chum interaction, but it would be less of a difference if it was not deliberately managed for.

Skagit chinook are truly a puzzle. There is now no targeted fishery of consequence for them anywhere in their range. Yet they remain depressed altho the past couple years have shown improvement. Egg to fry survival has been lower than I would expect. However, most Skagit chinook spawn in the very best habitat available, high flood protection below the Skagit dams, and least sediment input due to watershed being in the national park and wilderness areas. Current research may unravel this puzzle. I hope so, as it is the key to recovery of this chinook population.

The upshot here is that, just because certain Alaskan rivers are teaming with fish, don't assume the same results are possible here without replicating every one of the environmental conditions here as well. And in many instances that simply is not possible.

Beware of absolutes. And remember, assumption is the mother of all f#ckups.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Salmo G My point was not to say that the folks at WDFW are undereducated but simply to point out that the best avaliable science is not adequate for them to be making the assumptions they are making.
A little backround on where I am coming from. I grew up on the Washougal river. This is a river that was devastated by every type of problem imaginable. In the early 1900's it had 3 dams with no fish passage, was continually logged, mined and spash damed. it was polluted with mercury from a papermill. After all this there was still a stable population of wild summer steelhead numbering 1500 strong every year. In the 1960's the Skamania hatchery was built. At that exact time wild summer steelhead populations declined. it is an absolute that the hatchery caused the decline. fishermen were the first to notice it, and WDFW did nothing. it was not until the run was critically depressed that they did anything.
It is this type of managment that WDFW is famous for and they are wrong in maintaining this methodology. this indicates to me that Certain members of WDFW managment (who I am tempted to name) are inspite of their education completely and utterly I can think of no better word than stupid! There are some great people in WDFW particularly in region 5 (Dan Rawding) but at the state managment level they are blinded by their education. they seem content to stick with MSY inspite of it massive and clear failure. They seem to prefer reducing escapment goals and keeping fisheries open as opposed to doing the research to find out what the true ability of our streams are.
We are smack dab in the middle of the range for Chinook, Coho and steelhead and I think that WDFW are underestimating the carrying capacities of our streams, In fact to mee the numbers they come up with seem pretty arbitrary to me. As I said before we should be managing to return as many fish as possible to our streams and if we return too many then nature will sort that out on it's own. I know of no instance where having too many wild fish return to the avaliable habitat caused any problems.

Frankly until WDFW changes it's tune there is no hope for the future of wild salmonids, and NMFS needs to stand up aganst the anti-wild fish agenda .

Salmo g

Determining a rivers “carrying capacity” radiates a false sense of understanding that many scientists are beginning to acknowledge. Trying to manage escapement levels to hit a target number of return spawners based on the maximum perceived juvenals needed to fill a particular river ecosystem ignores the basic Darwinian premises as well as all the new data concerning the indigenous salmonids role as nutrient vectors in aquatic and riparian ecosystems.

I also feel that you have underestimated the impacts that over harvest and hatcheries have had on our regions native wild runs. Habitat is important for without even the minimalist amounts we cannot expect any restoration of wild salmon. Hatcheries have historically lead to the perception that “oh we can mitigate the loss of this pristine area with a hatchery”. Hatcheries have further lead to the misconception that “we have a hatchery on this system so we must have plenty of fish to harvest”. Scientifically there is no consensus that hatcheries produce more total fish that a natural river system would if left alone. It is theorized that hatcheries may only replace wild fish and not augment the total number of returning fish in many river systems.

Although when most people speak of habitat they are referring to spawning and rearing habitat the most important may be the river estuary. Out of all the data that is available the only models that explain why salmonid returns vary in the way that they do are ones that view the roles of the estuary and ocean conditions as paramount. If rearing habitat is the main limiting factor in salmon production then bypassing this habitat by the use of hatcheries would have produced a large and steady population of salmon for the past 40 years. Since that did not occur, more than likely looking at the whole picture, rearing habitat may not be key. Consequently, if returns were based solely on ocean conditions then we would more than likely see an equal increase in all populations from mid BC south to California (PDO theory). Because populations are not all increasing unilaterally it could be the interaction between estuary health and ocean conditions that is driving the returns. Although there are far too many factors that influence salmonid returns to try and discuss all at once, taking the most macroscopic view may be the only way to see the underlying trends that need to be fairly and openly addressed.

Thanks

POS Clerk

not in the habit of writing "fan letters" but Salmo G I really enjoy yer posts -- I get more useful info from you and a handful of others than the rest of the bb members put together. Peez accept a hearty thank you, I really appreciate it (reminds me of when I first discovered this board.

Sincerely,
Roger