Well I get a chance to get out this Fri. I am jsut curious if the cow is doing any good lately? I have heard the visiblity has been poor, but is comming back. Thanks
Buck

Very poor.
Just too much water level fuctuations.
The guides are doing OK.
I heard Barrier is getting very good actions.

I fished BC a couple of days ago and picked up a 13lb hen. I saw guite a few fish taken as well. send me a PM.

Steve

Things really don't look that good at the Barrier Dam the past week. Fish counts on the December 15 were 413 winter run steelhead. Most all of those fish have been recycled at lease once back downstream to I-5 boat ramp.

This week (December 29) they only took in 138 winter runs with 1 summer run. They recycled 114 down to Olequa and 57 down to I-5. That means that they are recycling fish from the trout hatchery now too.

Sounds like fishing will be slow unless those numbers pick up by next week. River flows have been pretty stable during that 2 week period (about 5200 cfs) so that would indicate that the run has already started to head downward. River flows jumped today to about 5900 cfs, so it may be good for a short time up at the Barrier dam.

Good luck

Cowlitzfisherman

Anybody know the record for most times a single steelhead has been recycled?

Must have looked like one of those kids with the long row of piercings around the ear.

I believe that they are still purko punching all steelhead the first time that they are recycled. The most that I remember seeing them punched is two times with a purko hole in their gill plate.

The main point and reasopn for them punching them the first time is so that the steelhead returns can be accurately counted to see if Tacoma is meeting their migration retuns on steelhead.

Not sure if they do it twice anymore or not! I would suspect that some get punched twice just becuase the person who is doing it just doesn't see the first hole some times.

Years ago when the retuning numbers were always so high on paper but not in actual numbers, (inflated by both Tacoma and WDW), the Friends of Cowlitz finally put enough pressure on WDW to mark all the recycled fish so that we could tell how many were actually new fish, and how many were just the same fish being counted 6 or 7 times!

That's one of, if not the number one reason, why the "hatchery counts" on winter steelhead have been so low for the past 6 or so years on Cowlitz winter steelhead.

Now you will be seeing an even lesser number of steelhead retuning in the Winter due to the new Settlement Agreement that WDFW has signed onto with Tacoma, NMFS and others.

Never again will you be seeing those inflated numbers i.e. 22,000 winter steelhead numbers retuning to the Cowlitz.

Cowlitzfisherman

What's up Buck???? Who gave you Friday off??

Come on Buck, I can't wait 'til Monday. Report?

Well Gutpile, I decided to go away from the snow. So I didn't go to the cowlitz. I went up to the Salmon and then stopped by the Satsop. All I can say is things were pretty slow. The Salmon was extremely low and clear and the fish that were there weren't fresh. The Satsop still had some late sivers in it but I didn't mange to catch any of them. Oh byt the way I was lucky enough to have vacation still so that is how I had Fri. off
Buck