Rich,

All I can say is... why?

We told them so and are still telling them so. They know but choose to ignore.

Anglers have spoken but they choose to ignor.

Our wild steelhead stocks continue to be decimated by over harvest and one by one each population has or is on the verge of colapse. But again they choose to ignore.

All that is happening is they are trying to manage the colapsed stocks into healthy stocks so they can be decimated agian. Using the same failed science that got the fish in this situation in the first place.

It is truely sad the state we are in.

Rich

I know that these are NOT steelhead numbers, but what does it tell you about commercial harvest and what commercial harvest have done on the Columbia alone? They say a "picture" is worth a million words……….so!

Cowlitz,

Exactly it has happened everywhere in Washington to one degree or another.

The Skeena is most definitely netted. A HUGE and very NON-SELECTIVE commercial fishery targeting artificially enhanced sockeye runs as well as pink runs takes place in the lower river. Most years, this fishery takes upto half or more of the summer steelhead returning to the Skeena as an "incidental" catch, along with a sizable chunk of the system's ailing wild coho population. The netting was stopped once (I believe 1998) by then minister of fisheries David Anderson, a true advocate for wild salmon/steelhead who finally put the interests of the fish before that of the powerful commercial fishing lobby. He finally stopped the proverbial buck... no more of this garbage of managing for MSY of only one species (enhanced sockeye) to the detriment of every other wild fish population in the drainage. The commercial boys have been warned for years to find a way to get those coho and steelhead past the nets, and when they couldn't, he just flat shut'em down. Of course Anderson is now long gone, and the Skeena has reverted back to business as usual.

We once had a guy like that here in WA... oh, but all too briefly. Bern Shanks was quickly ousted by the "powers that be" for his stance on putting the fish first. The good guys just don't stand a chance!

WOW Double Haul! I read it beginning to end! The arguments against MSY/MSH are very well laid out in this summary. The music is playing, why isn't anyone dancing... or are they even listening?

Keep the faith brother!

not listening im afraid

Rich

Before one can support going to total c&r for all wild steelhead; one must first establish what is really causing the problem. Is it "sport fishing" that really is causing the decline? Or is it some other harvester that is helping in causing the wild steelhead runs to decline?

Since "wild" steelhead are not marked or CWT (coded wire tagged), how can we say with any certainty that they are not part of someone else's harvest? I hear a lot of "theories" out there, but I do not hear any science to back up those "theories" I know that the picture below shows only "fall chinook", but it also shows how the species is harvested. Have you ever seen any such data like this that relates to how "wild steelhead, or any steelhead is harvested? I think not! Why hasn't that information been established yet?

What science can one use to support the theory that c&r will help our wild steelhead to recover? I believe that most people would not mind erroring on the side of the fish if they had any science to back up that sport fishing is the major cause for our decline of wild steelhead. Where is that science? Millions of CWT have been used now for over 30 years, and we are now just seeing the full data that they have given.

Why hasn't WDFW taken wild steelhead smolts and clipped them, and given them CWT? After you view how Cowlitz fall chinooks are harvested, one must ask; how many wild steelheads are being harvested from someone else or other source? Are we really looking at the "big picture"? Or are we only looking into a narrow little peep hole of the big picture; or are we just seeing what we want to see?

How in the world can we "manage" wild steelhead for MSY or MSH, or for that matter, anything when we don't even know who in the hell is doing the harvesting?

Cowlitz,

I havent seen anything like that for steelhead.

You hit the nail on the head.

We know very little about wild steelhead in general once they leave our coast. But we manage them on a fine line under MSY, MSH using mostly data gathered instream for forcasts. Untill we do know more about these fish shouldnt a more conservative stance be taken and some error on the side of the fish?

"Should a conservative stance be taken and some error on the side of the fish?"

I really don't know Rich. If someone else is nailing all of our steelhead, would a c&r fishery help solve our problem? Most likely not! It would certainly allow whoever was targeting them to continue targeting them until the last ones are gone!

I have no problem with c&r if it could be shown that it would really help the problem, but there is absolutely no science that I am aware of to support it. Personally, I think there is a lot more going on out there than what meets the eye. How can anyone manage a fish when no one knows what's happening to them?

C&R may be a noble thing to do, but may not be the best answer. It just seems to me that there was always 4 times more salmon then there where steelhead, so it wouldn't take to long for someone, someplace, or some other condition to take its toll on our wild steelhead fish. It could even be that one of there "sources of food" of steelhead are being targeted, and that they just can't survive in enough numbers anymore to be self sustaining.

It could be that they are falling prey to some other specie; it could be a combination of many different things. Can any one come up with the science to show that a c&r fishery can or would stop there decline?

As much as our board members may hate to admit it, wild steelhead recovery may already be beyond the point of recovery; and it could all be from causes, reasons and sources that we don't even know exist. It's extremely possible that all steelhead may some day be looking to our hatcheries for there survival as a specie! Hatcheries saving steelhead instead of destroying them…what a switch that one would be!

Anyway you look at Rick, it looks pretty bleak unless someone can pin point what the real problem for there decline is. It's kind of like trying to develop a cure for a disease, when you don't even know what the disease is.

Cowlitzfisherman

So what do you suggest we do right now?

Should we continue buisness as ushuall with only the limitted knoledge we have? Should we continue to harvest as we have management that accounts for every fish before thy even show up?

Or should we put some type of safety nett in there untill we find out what is going on so we can put together the correct management? Im not talking about just CnR.

Good topic and debate, but lets not leap to incorrect conclusions. CF, the dramatic decline in Columbia River salmon fisheries is not so much due to commercial harvest as it is the 21 dams on the river eliminating hundreds of miles of spawning habitat. Eliminate all commercial harvest on the Columbia and runs won't come near what they were in the mid-19th century.

As far as the commercial harvest of steelhead, the commercials are required to list all salmonid species--steelhead just don't seem to be caught in great numbers outside of river mouths.

I like the idea of state-wide C&R becoming a rallying point or some sort of fulcrum, tipping the scales to managing steelhead more conservatively. Although whether the ball will get sufficiently rolling to do anything about tribal netting, I don't know. Perhaps it doesn't matter if the fish are managed using a more ecologically based model.

One other point, we lament how people (fish managers) don't listen to us or view the run data as we view them. Bottom line, sport fishermen aren't listened to because none of us are speaking in a loud and influential manner. We are habitually underrepresented at the North of Falcon meetings where crucial decisions are made. We have no where near the financial support or political influence that the commerical fishing lobbies have been able to muster. There is little unity between our various groups. We deserve what we get.

Which gets me back to one of Rich's premises--using C&R as a stepping stone to a change in managment philosophy, or perhaps more importantly, a rallying point to unite sporties. CF was right in his statement that there isn't a lot of evidence that C&R will recover runs. The best we can say is "it can't hurt" (which is good enough for me). This is a large stumbling block in overcoming the decades of inertia of using MSY. It's easy for fish managers to resist change in the absence of hard data. All these shades of gray. But passage of state-wide C&R and essentially declaring the steelhead as a gamefish, may be the first step in making the fish a true gamefish, not to be used as a food source outside of subsistence.

Here is my analogy.

A cow in a pen will crap in it's food and water and look over the fence for more food and water. If none was given to it it would stand their and die of thirst and hunger. people like to think humans are smarter than cows. All you have to do is look at what we have done to the fish runs in the N Pacific to see that we really are not any different than the cow.

With the law not having anything to do with right or wrong common sense pevailing is now all but impossible. the law is about the process and we will have to completely crash the system before we are utterly shocked into doing the right thing. Like the cow a 2 x 4 between the eyes is all we understand sometimes.

I truely believe CnR will unite fisherman. We will not all agree with CnR as there is a group of fisherman that appose it but I bleieve it will untie us in the sense of bringing about a change in our management on wild steelhead.

With the way things are now both sport fishers groups are loosing. We have lost CnR opportunities due to declining runs and at the same time we are loosing catch and kill opportunities due to declining runs. Instead of fighting to change management we fight each other about who should get the scraps that are still available. This issue is making it possible for our fish managers not to fix the real problems.

WDFW's actions in the rule purposals this year has shown they are affraid of what CnR will bring about, it is really crystal clear they are staying away from this issue because they know what it will cause

WDFW has used the Pergone Opportunity scare tactic with sport fishers on this issue.

They simply would not even here the issue of CnR this year even though it was the loudest voice that wanted to be heard.

They are very affraid of this issue passing.

So what would happen if it did pass and the tribes took advantage of Forgone Opportunity. Would we as sport fishers sit back and bicker amongst ourselves about it or would we force change in the management of our fish? Who would we come down on and demand change?

It's clear the only way to change the management practices is to force them. I also agree, as well intended as C+R is, it means nothing, without a core shift in philosiphy. And C+R MAY or may not force a change. The sport fishers will never become a force to challenge the state. I'm not sure how many read all of the great posts above, I did and have concluded theres no way to make enough people understand such a complex issue. Not so much they wont understand the issues, i'm just trying to imagine explaining it to them, and keeping them awake! Without help from Hollywood, it's a snore.

Perhaps we need help from the only agency with the power and resourses, to force the state to change. The federal government. Is this a realistic option? What federal agency(s) could take action against the state? Is there a history of any previous efforts to empower the feds? I just dont see a way beat someone who makes and changes the rules.


Fight fire with fire!

CF, differentiating wild steelhead from hatchery steelhead is not a problem at all - CWTs are unnecessary. Every steelhead has scales, and every wild fish has a distinctive scale pattern from hatchery fish, based upon the way scale annuli (rings) are laid down in the radically different early life history conditions of hatchery and wild steelhead. These scales are easy to read and in studies I have participated in could be read with 99+% accuracy. Besides, all hatchery fish are clipped and all wild fish aren't on most rivers. I think the gathering of data is not a problem.

What is a problem is MSY, an obviously faulty human-centric assumption based upon incomplete data. One only has to ask, if "overescapement" is so bad for fish, then when they are left to their own devices why do they do it? The answer is simple - it is good for stocks of salmonids to "overescape", which is why they evolved to do it. We only know some of the answers why, but among them are fertilizing the watersheds for productivity of the next generation, excavating the gravel to dislodge silt so the subsequent eggs placed on top of the first redds have a high survival rate, as a hedge against killer floods that wipe out early or late portions of the run, as a way to satiate predators so more than enough fish will survive to carry on - the list can go on and on. No where are we near to ecological optimum for any wild salmon run, and the release of all wild salmonids is the only way to get there.

As far a someone claiming "forgone opportunity" as a reason to prevent release of fish, that is a bunch of bunk and here is why. The value of a sport caught fish is 15 times or more higher than the value of a commercially harvested fish, and this value is in the CATCHING, not the harvesting. I and thousands like me will spend many days on the water, and many dollars preparing for and during those days, just to catch a fish. The dollars I spend have nothing to do with harvesting a fish - I have spent them and enriched the economy whether I catch one or not. However, if I do catch fish, many fish, and release them, I will come back more often to do it again and again. Others will be attracted to the high numbers of steelhead for them to catch and release. This is real, not "forgone", opportunity, and produces real dollars. Now here is the kicker, the more steelhead released, the more catching goes on, the more dollars generated. These dollars are generated in directly in proportion to the opportunity to catch and release a fish.

There real "forgone opportunity" is when this fish is gillnetted and sold for pennies a pound. The economy of the state has forgone the benefits of all the effort and dollars we would have put into catching that fish over and over if it had been left in the river. This is wrong, verging on immoral, and criminally wasteful. It is a stupid arrangement, and it is way stupid for anyone to support it, let alone state agencies and representatives. Tell them so, frequently.

spawnout

Amen, brother, amen!

Spawnout

I assume that only this first section of your post was meant to address my comments?

I am fully aware of how scales can be analyzed to establish "certain biological information"! My point in my earlier post was relating to "how and where" steelhead may be harvested once they have left our rivers. It has always been my understanding that was the entire purpose for our game managers to use the CWT's!

It simply shows where a fish (salmon) comes from and what stock it is, time, etc. about the fish. I guess other information may also be in the CWT, but this was my main purpose for addressing why we were not using CWT's on steelhead.

I have never seen any such data on wild steelhead. If it's out there, it's being kept pretty close to someone's belt! Why else do you think that our fish managers know so little about what happens to these fish once they hit the seas? As far as I know, no ones know for sure were they really go to, or if they may be targeted during there cycle at sea. They knew they were getting hit buy foreign drift nets at one point, but that's all I ever heard. I know for a fact, that lots of fish have been, and still are being caught in the huge commercial harvest of other fish, but once they are drug up onto the decks (almost always dead), they are immediately thrown back into the sea because they are not allowed to keep them!

None of those fish are ever kept by these ships to see where they (the fish) had came from, so no data is ever kept, taken or recorded! They know if they were to keep the fish, the data would show that they were the ones who were "intercepting", and that would mean the end to their fishery!

So I guess I would have to respectfully disagree with you about the gathering of data not being a problem.

Cowlitzfisherman

obsessed

You said;

That's only because on the Columbia, the "mouth of the Rivers are all "sanctuaries", so that means that there is NO GILL NETTING or Commercial fishing at all! But when you look at last years commercial fishery on the Columbia when WDFW "observers" were "placed on" the commercial boats, there was a huge catch of steelhead.

Last year alone (2002) during the tangle net fishery, the nets intercepted more steelhead than the targeted hatchery-origin spring chinook. Of the 20,900 steelhead caught in this fishery 12,400 were wild fish. Estimates of mortality, both immediate and post-release, are between 2,400 and 6,100 threatened, wild winter steelhead, representing between 5 and 15% of the entire run.

So how in the devil can you tell us;
????

If you compare a tangle net to the regular nets that they use for gill netting the coho, they look almost identical. That's WHY they catch so many steelhead!


Only just in the last couple of years did the commercial boys start counting the steelhead in there nets! That's only because they now have "observer's" placed on board. Before that, they had two choices! 1) They had to through them back; or 2) they were sold illegally! Oh yea, I forgot about their "honor system" that they claimed they used!

That is why there is NO RECORDS of the commercial catching of steelhead!

Cowlitzfisherman

I know one thing. MSG is definitely bad for you. But what does it have to do with fishing? Oh wait, that's the stuff they put in the pink worm packages. I see, looks like salt but it's really MSG. Got it.
Just havin some fun of course
Cuttie