Seems to me alot of people kill any Dolly caught and throw them up on the bank for Eagle food. (I perfer to wrap them in alum foil and throw them on my heater for lunch) Some say all they do is eat salmon and steelhead eggs and by killing them we are saving alot of fry.

Wheather it's legal or not to kill a Dolly, or a sucker (some rivers are open to Dollies) are we really helping the fry or are we interfering with nature?

By removing a species from a river are we hurting the natural balance?

Let's say it's a river open to Dollies, and there was no "Un-wantfull Waste Law", what do you all think and why?

IF (big if here) the run can sustain harvest, AND I want it for dinner, I'll keep it. If I don't intend to eat it, I would let it go. They are cool looking fish.

Northern Pikeminnow are a different story. They become fertilizer, or whatever the BPA does with them. That would be an example of a fish I would keep, but not eat.

The Dolly might be the most underrated game fish in the state. I have caught Dollies on the Upper *shhh!* to 11 pounds, and all over the rest of the OP. I seem to catch alot of them this time of year with spinners and spoons. When I catch a sizable Dolly in the tailout it pretty much assures me that there are bigger fish in the hole.

Good thing they taste freakin horrible or I might have killed a few more of them. Anyone I saw killing a Dolly and feeding it to the birds would get a 'piece of mind' (if there is anything left to spare).

I see them as a part of the balance installed by nature to maintain the health of the various ecosystems they inhabit. Seems to me that eggs dollies eat as they float by are doomed anyway, I highly doubt Dollies forage eggs that have been successfully laid in redds. Especially when the spawners are present.

As much attention as the national fish and game is giving the dolly varden/bull trout populations I would not recomend tossing one up on the beach for fertilizer.I will take it personal if I ever see it happen.The other side of the coin is they will start closing rivers down if the situation does not improve.They just did on the skoke so do not think they can't

I caught a good number of good size this year on the skoke which was truly amazing and encouraging as I have only caught two in the past 20 years.They just closed the upper reaches because they think it is spawning habitat.All of the dolly's that I caught were in one single run on the skoke.That is making the usfws guys wonder about the stream that dumps in just above this reach.I guess they like little tribs for spawning.Kinda interesting stuff.

I believe that all trout will eat fry, if they are bigger than the fry. I've caught Rainbows, Cutts, etc with fry in their guts. Heck, I've caught a 15 lb summer steelie that had a smolt in its gut and another summer fish with its stomach so swollen with eggs it was almost as big as my(then) 16 yr old fist. I hate the thought of "wasting" legal or not any native gamefish.

Clonking a Dollie for dinner is one thing but to just pitch it up in the brush to save a few fry is criminal! I have caught many dollies that were so full of 4-6" smolts that they were puking them up when beached, but that is just natures way. The rivers I've seen this on have healthy runs of salmon,steelhead and dollies so I don't think there is any real impact.

G-Man, People that have this mentality towards Char are ignorant of the ecosystem.

I guess I never considered the fry eating part...I suppose they could and do predate ferociuosly on fry. Its either them or the Blue Herons though....

Ah - one of my favorite fish.

I agree with Stlhdh2o - the Dolly Varden/bull trout are a great gamefish, especially when the tackle is scaled to their size. Try those 20 inch fish on your 5 weight fly rods.

While it is common to see them feeding on eggs the vast majority of the eggs are those that have been dug up by the spawning salmon - thus dead eggs. It is an old wives tale that they dig them out of the gravel.

They certainly are a predator, in fact an apex predator - the top dog if you will. However Ginrdog is correct all salmonids eat smaller salmonids.

Our native char are a great indicator species. They use the whole system from the glaciers to the salt. If they are abundant then the river is functioning as it should. Throwing them or any other species into the brush just becasue of some mis-directed bias is reprehensible.

Tight lines
Smalma

I am new to the board, so please don't jump on me because my post may be controversial. First off, it is illegal to kill any char in Washington State, they are listed under the Endangered Species Act, so those of you that are talking about eating them or tossing them, I think the USFWS will be interested in your confessions. It is also illegal to target them for fishing. So, that is why numbskulls like Bill Herzog who write articles that suggest targeting an Endangered SPecies are under close scrutiny from the USFWS. You are not allowed to target the fish, not allowed to keep the fish, so just release them gently if you catch them.

7x7-
You are correct for most of the state however there are several streams were it is legal to fish for and even keep char in the state. On the West side of the Cascades you are allowed 2 a day over 20 inches on the Skagit and Snohomish river systems. I believe there are couple streams on the east side but since I don't fish there much I'm not sure which.

When bull trout were listed the fisheries on the Skagit and Snohomsih were in place and are allowed to continue by USFWS (WDFW had determined that those populations were healthy). The populations in both basin continue to increase (since the 20 inch minimum size limit) with more than a 5 fold increase in spawners in the last decade.

Tight lines
Smalma

Now, when exactly did Bill do this?

Maybe the USFWS and NMFS should "scrutinize" their own idiotic management practices that have led to the depressesd numbers of Hood Canal salmon in the first place.

Don't worry DanS, it's just "hedgehog's" arch-nemisis back for some more bashing.

Funny thing KB, I was thinkin' the same thing.

What do these people have against william the impaler? Give a guy a break.

Just a little more Dolly info. WDFW biologist Curt Kraemer was largely responsible for the 20-inch minimum size regulation for Dollies on the Skagit system about ten years ago. It was based on the fact that Dollies don't spawn until they're about seventeen inches long. In a recent conversation with him he told me that in the annual September count the average number of Dolly redds in that system had increased from 3.7 per mile to 37 per mile; a tenfold increase in ten years.

hey all....
first off i would like to say that, yes, its me hedgie...now all those stories where a bunch of BS, good for u those of you who caught that...it was all for a report on internet aggression among different age groups....iff'n you dont believe me, ill post the report...

anywho, 7x7 good reply...i think you are right on, the fact is that we problably shouldnt even have a season for char/dolly varden since you CANNOT distinguish them from a bull trout, that and there are still many streams that bull trout "supposedly" dont inhabit...i got a couple scale samples from a local montesano river like this and they are what? you guessed it, bull trout. I just think that we (as someone said before) shouldnt try to mess around with the balance, we aready do that enough with hatchery fish and with what we are doing to our rivers, and please if you want to do something for the fish, dont kill them(with the exception of pikeminnow's, or tigermusky), go volenteer somewhere because that is what they (char/dollies) are born to do, their called predators.

Two points about throwing dollies up on the bank:

1) It's illegal, immoral, and unethical. It's called wastage of game. If I see someone do it, I'll be on the phone to the gamies so fast your head will spin.

2) If dollies are such a plague to salmon and steelhead, however did the runs manage before we were here to kill the dollies? Seems to me the salmon did fine before we were here. Maybe the dollies aren't the problem?

There's no doubt that dollies, and rainbows, and steelhead, and salmon smolts, and cutthroats, will eat loose salmon eggs. However, the precise reason salmonids bury their eggs in gravel is to protect them from predation, among other things. The loose eggs are dead already.

I'm sure that some of the fingerlings get eaten, too, but I haven't seen any data that indicates that dollies and other freshwater predation are anywhere near the threat to the fish that, say, loss of habitat is.

If you go fish in Alaska, the rivers that have the best salmon runs have the best dollie runs as well. Doesn't seem to hurt the salmon there. For a long time, Alaska had a misguided bounty on dollies. Once they got decent biologists in the fish and game department, the practice stopped. We could learn something from Alaska - they have actually recovered some salmon runs.

More and more genetic evidence is pointing to (plus many scientists now believe) the fact that the fish we have always called Dolly Varden are in fact Bull Trout.

Obssesed (on the board) is doing a study in the Snohomish system right now to better understand where Bull Trout overwinter within a river system.

His knowledge of Bull Trout/Dolly Varden far exceeds most on the subject and I am sure he could fill us in.

thanks for the info rp..i cant wait to see what he says....do you know if he,or anyone else, is gonna continue the study on rivers in south puget sound?