Get involved-

If have not done so please remember to send in your Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) rules proposal packets in by July 18th.

Be sure to show your support for wild steelhead release by proposing-
“ Statewide release for all wild steelhead, no exceptions” It is important that you use those words exactly because the WDFW's default statewide policy is targeted as Wild Steelhead Release (only hatchery marked fish allowed for harvest). Harvest of wild steelhead is, however, allowed on systems that are consistently seeing run-sizes that exceed escapement goals. The following is a WDFW link to the website to obtain a proposal form:

http://www.wa.gov/wdfw/fish/regs/2004-2005prop.pdf

why would you want to release wild fish on some rivers that have strong runs on them leave it at 5 fish per year.

why keep 5 wild steelies, when you can release them and have a better run in a few years, its people with your mind frame that bonked the hell out em on the nisqually and now we have no fishing access to them at all..

The reason is that 15 years ago there were approx. 30 rivers in this state that were deemed to have healthy enough runs of wild steelhead to have a harvest. Today there is approx. 12 streams that are open to harvest of wild steelhead. It seems to me something is amiss with WDFW's escapement numbers. Why not err on the conservative side. Nobody will starve because they don't have a wild Steelhead to eat.

...except maybe Plunker!

i agree with this, shut off all harvest of wild steelhead "including" targeted catch and release seasons, they also have to have a number of fish to harvest to let them happen, i say restore all the runs to historic run sizes. there are plenty of hatchery fish to catch and keep and catch and release.

LOL 4salt...

I'll bet he gets a good chuckle out of that...

Maybe it'll draw him out of the hole he's been hiding in.....

If you are for shutitng down fishing for catch and realese fo wild fish then the only place to fish are the ones that don't have wild fish in them anymore. Even if you are fishing for hatchery fish in Decemeber there are still wild fish present so if you are against catch and release then you would want that fishery closed down too. As it is a targeted catch and realese fishery on wild fish. In fact it might be more important to close that fishery down to protect the early returning wild fish that were hammered for years by the states early season catch and kill fishery on them.

Just want to see if people are consistent.

JJ

If you do not support this proposal you do not care about wild steelhead period!! The two are absolutely contradictory with absolutely no reconcilliation between the two. Killing wild steelhead in the state of washington is stupid and selfish no one should be harvesting them. The catch and release debate is an absolute red herring as mortality on released steelhead with selective regs is next to nothing.

If you are uncertain i suggest you get a copy of the wild steelhead coalitions white paper on the benefits of wild steelhead release statewide without exception.
nimber of healthy steelhead runs in Washington state? 0
number of wild steelhead it is smart to harvest in washington state? 0

I speak in absolutes because there is THE MOST black and white issue there is in wild steelhead managment.

boater, I am happy to take your "left handed" agreement, the most important thing is to get involved in the proposal process and make sure the proposal makes it to the hearings.

Rob Allen,
I see that you are a fishing guide and that you only deal in absolutes. Great! The absolute fact is this:
1) The rivers of the west end are consistantly hammered (by an overabundence of guides) in a way that no one, particularly locals, could have ever imagined.
2) 70-80% of all natives killed each year on west end rivers were laying in the bottom of guide boats (ask any fish checker).
3)Given both 1) & 2) above, even the simplest mind could deduce that the fishing guide factor adding to the demise of wild steelhead is fairly substantial.
How many trips a year do you need to pay the bills? Can we put that number in accidental wild steelhead kills. Surely you do not have a problem with the occasional fisherman that gets out twice a year and is fortunate enough to catch one fish (wild or not)?

Bulldog. you may be right however that doesn't bear out with what I have seen. Last wild steelhead i saw killed was poached by an angler on the Upper Washougal. The main problem is that people view fish as nothing more than something to harvest. That mentality HAST TO CHANGE!! This isn't about managing fish it's about managing peoples behavior! if we wanna save wild steelhead people have to view these fish as valuable not just a hunk of meat to stick in their freezer.

As a guide I operate primarily on hatchery rivers with single barbless atrificials. I will not allow anyone on my trips to kill a wild steelhead even if it were legal to do so.
I don't guide for a living. I guide to enhance the income of my job and because there is nothing more important to me then to help other anglers have a more enjoyable and hopefully productive time on the water. I focus on the expereince not meat hunting.

Last year i was able to make it out to the penninsula twice and in thoes trips i saw 3 dead wild steelhead all three were caught by 2 guys on the Bogie. Funny thing was is that they took out at the 101 bridge!!! these were not guides!! They were obviously locals and i'd be willing to bet sisnce they had 3 fish in one day theit 5 fish a year limit got surpassed by a great deal. These guys drove a green ford ranger and one needed a device to help him walk.. ( logging injury???)
anyway these two guys should be ashamed of themselves as should anyone who chooses to harvest a wild steelhead in Washington it is a greedy selfish act! especially with so many hatchery fish around. Harvesting wild steelhead is stupid!! Anyone who does it doesn't deserve to fish..

rob i got a question for you if they do make it catch and release for wild steelhead on all washington rivers would the tribes see it like hay theres more wild fish that they can catch? and do so and in the long run were in the same boat as it stands ?

Fish for life frankly i don't care what the tribes do. I meant what i said No one should be harvesting wild steelhead anywhere in the state period. no tribes no sport no commercial.
If WSR makes it so one wild steelhead doesn;t get harvested on the Hoh then it's worth it.
We do need to work to get the tribes and the commercials off too but we also need to not take thoes fish ourselves. for now we need to stop doing damage ourselves before we tell other user groups what they should do..

Good topic!
This is a major regulation cycle and for all those with ideas on how to improve the various fisheries through regulation changes now is the time to get those ideas in. If you have no new ideas please review the various proposals that will be coming up for consideration and comment later this year.

Get involved - as far as I'm concern if you don't you no longer have a legitimate right to complaint about the regulation/rules.

Jerry -
Wild Steelhead Release (WSR) is not a magic bullet that is going to restore wild runs. In nearly every case those populations that supported harvestable fish 20 years ago and don't today have problems other than harvest. If currrent escapements were less than carrying capacity (over fished) then the next generation's run size on the average would be larger than the previous escapement. That is not the situation for most of the above populations. Those popualtions will not rebound until those other factors change.

Boater-
Restoring fish runs to historic run sizes will take much more than WSR. Habitat modeling for Puget Sound chinook (ESA listed species) for example shows that the capacity of most of our rivers have been reduced 5 to 10 fold. Elinimating all fishing will not restore our runs to historic levels.

Rob -
To imply that hooking mortality can not be significant is being less than honest. If fishing results in a fish not surviving to spawn that is an impact. Those impacts include not only harvest but hooking/handling mortalities of both adults and juveniles. In my neck of the woods the current low flows and warm weather likley means we'll be seeing summer hooking/handling much higher than normal. Some how I think you'd be concern with a CnR bait fishery directed toward parr/smolts.

To the board -
WSR is a fisheries management tool that has been used to allocate fishing impacts. Originally it was used to access hatchery fish.
If you wish to allocate wild fish fishing impacts to just hatchery and non-consumative fisheries than WSR is a nice tool. However it is NOT a conservation tool.

Tight lines
Smalma

Smalma

I know that we kind of butted heads on the Cowlitz issue recently, but I just wanted to let you known that I still do highly respect your opinion and thoughts. Too darn bad that you are not higher up in our fishery management chain! (Well maybe you're better off where you are).

I do enjoy the way that you do not let your emotions get away (one of my own short falls sometimes) from you. You do set a standard that is hard for most of us to beat. I for one, would like to thank you for all of your "logical impute", even though we may have disagreement at times. Our board is very lucky to have people such as you that are so willing to share there knowledge with others

Thanks again,

Cowlitzfisherman

Salama

I know that there is hooking mortality and that it does happen. I just am of the belief that with single barbless artificials ( swung flies inparticular such mortality is extremely rare. However you bring up another issue, that of warm water hooking mortality. I'd be all for regs that close wild steelhead fisheries when water temps are above (XX ?) degrees.
Having read the mortalitiy studies conducted in Canada I learned that nearly all hooking mortality is the result of serious injury to the fish caused by deep hooking, and or the associated injuries of removing hooks that are deep and barbed.
Since that discussion cam about while discussing my bussiness as a guidethe only reletive type of fishing to talk about is swinging barbless flies on single hooks, in doing so the number of fish hooked deep is near zero and seeing as how i wouldn'd run a guide trip in water over abou 65 degrees warm water mortality is also extremely close to zero.
I feel extremely confident in saying that in the course of my fishing life, 20 years or so, i have had no wild steelhead hooked deep or in water so warm as to have associated mortality. Therefore with confidence i can say I have never had a steelhead die as the resullt of hooking mortality.

Rob Allen (& the rest of this forum),
We now know that any future post you make will have zero credibility. After exposing your hypocrasy on wild steelhead release you could only reply by making a corrulation between 'device to help him walk' and "logger" (not birth defect, car accident, diabetes or any other of a plethora of ailments)
Does African-American = Rap music, Hispanic = stolen car stereo, Asian = UW Law School? You get the point. Your absolutes are without any merit! Convicted priests should discontinue preaching the word.

I sent my proposal document in today. They have to be received by WDFW by 7/18. I asked for statewide Wild Steelhead Release. Smalma, you are right, WSR is not a magic bullet, however it is part of the ammo. We clearly know that a bonked fish is dead and can not contribute to the gene pool. Out of 100 Steelhead released we have a good possibility of between 96 and 90 surviviing to spawn. It is admittedly a compromise and one that allows us to keep fishing. It is a compromise that I support. My $.02

Rob-
Wonderful to hear the you have not had to endure of the agony of a critically hooked wild fish that you had or wish to release. Many of us have not be as lucky.

Your idea of banning fishing when temperatures exceed a thershold is interesting though I'm sure how to implement such a standard - however it certainly would be helpful to the fish. We see large diurnal temperature swings with the magnitude dependent on daily weather patterns and stream flow conditions. Perhaps the simplest way would be for total closures during July and August.

In the same vein there is some information that kelts (spawnouts) also are likely to experience higher hooking mortalities - should we be closing fishing while they are in our systems? Say March 1 to the end of June.

I am somewhat surprised that in SW Washington you don't occassionally encounter suicidal wild pre-smolts. Here in the "overharvested" rivers of the North Puget Sound area in my experience such fish are fairly common even on swung single barbless flies (occassionally fatally impaling themselves on the barbless hook).

Tight lines
Smalma