If you think WSR is too difficult to stomach try getting 100 million dollars to buy people out in the flood plain and to fix all the habitat that we have screwed up. At least as a first step WSR is relatively cost free to the state. I can just hear all the people crying like stuck pigs when their property taxes double or triple to fix the habitat.

Geoduck, Welcome to the Jungle The other folks have been kind enough to point of the flaws in your arguement on WSR for Puget Sound Rivers - I would like to take on your part of the arguement revolving around habitat. I would agree with you that habitat is probably the most important factor and certainly one of the most difficult to deal with, BUT any one factor that is concentrated on at the exclusion of others will not work. All of the H's (Hydro, Habitat, Harvest, and Hatcheries) need to be worked on in order to have a real and long lasting solution. Can't do one without the others if you want success. And yes, that includes WSR as well. It is not the "magic bullet", it is just a piece of the puzzle.

Fist off, I am not opposed to WSR. It just sticks in my craw that it was justified with junk science. If you had made economic or maximization of recreation arguments I would wholeheartedly support it.

Like I've said before. Good political arguements can be made and supported for WSR. The science arguement for WSR doesn't hold water.

Secondly, On a related note. Pinks are closely related to steelhead and their population dynamics are grossly similiar, sure they are different speicies and thus obvious differnces. Just trying to give an illustration of how dynamic salmonid populations can be. More like comparing red delicious and granny smiths I think.

Third, For steelhead we have people crying about a ~ 20% sort term decline on some rivers. This trend in the short term is really not that big a deal. If it continues for 20 more years, then maybe its a problem.

Sorry about my error on regs I haven't kept up on where it is legal or not. I've never kept a wild steelhead in my life (not that I fish for them that much anymore).

If you guys really want to ignore habitat, and waste time playing with regulations feel free. I can't stop you, but I've argued to the best of my ability for helping the resource in the most scientifically sound way: working to preserve and restore habitat.

As a scientist, I just feel that pointing out junk science when I see it is my obligation.


That's all I have to say.

Quoted by Geoduck "Fist off, I am not opposed to WSR. It just sticks in my craw that it was justified with junk science. If you had made economic or maximization of recreation arguments I would wholeheartedly support it."


Geoduck, FYI, the decision was not justified with "junk science", but with data. There's a difference between science and data. Data that clearly shows a downward trend.

If you are not opposed to WSR, what do you offer for ideas of a better management plan? What is the correct science? Seems to me we still have plenty of hatchery steelhead to harvest, if anglers want to harvest a steelhead for the table.


I believe the track record of the current management scheme, i.e. MSY/MSH speaks for itself. It's like "manifest destiny" and it's symptoms are begining to show on the OP, no matter how much we disagree.

Geoduck,

The data clearly shows a downward trend in all populations except one, and that one has recently suffered declines, too.

There is no science involved in those graphs...it is data, data that is generated by WDFW.

No one, except you, has suggested that habitat ought not be dealt with. Tribal fishing and hatchery interactions need to be dealt with, too. Hatchery reform is being studied by the HSRG right now, though there are indications that WDFW has plans to pretty much ignore whatever the HSRG and LLTK's come up with in the reform plan. At the WSC board meeting last night we voted to accept the HSRG's request to join their Hatchery Reform Coalition.

What habitat issues do you suggest be addressed, and how? As the VP of Political Affairs for the Wild Steelhead Coalition I have been down in Olympia recently to give testimony on bills regarding instream flows, which control water flows and temperature, balancing the needs of fish with those of farmers and municipalities. I've also been down to Olympia two times to work on issues involving commercial bycatch of wild ESA steelhead during the Columbia River commercial fishery. (See the "WSC letter to NOAA Fisheries" thread to see the six page letter full of more "junk science" opposing WDFW/ODFW's request to raise allowable ESA impacts on those endangered and threatened fish from 2% to 6%).

We've also petitioned several agencies and governmental entities to fund the rehabilitation of landslides that are stifling the Stillaguamish River.

Clearly no one thinks that WSR is the cure to all that ails wild steelhead. By itself it clearly hasn't recovered the severely depressed Puget Sound runs.

What it will do, though, is prevent further harvest of these fish as the other issues that need to be dealt with are being dealt with.

As an environmental attorney and a scientist, I feel that pointing out the inaccuracies of other's statements to be my obligation, especially when it involves a subject that they clearly haven't thought through very well, and make statements that are patently incorrect.

Fish on...

Todd

Todd when did you start calling yourself a scientist?

I see that a lot of people who have a degree of some sort in "biology" are now classifying or claiming them selves to be "scientists" Is that what you are now doing? What are the degrees that a person must hold to be "officially" called a scientist?


Cowlitzfisherman

CFM,

I started calling myself a scientist after getting my degree in marine biology, with a minor in chemistry, spending half a year at a marine center in the San Juan Islands, and working as a biologist for several years.

Fish on...

Todd

**edit to follow**

Sorry, CFM, I tried to let it slide, but here goes, anyway...

For someone who claims to have all the answers about law, politics, and science, not to mention the fine art of sniffing out all of the conspiracies out there aimed directly at you and all other "real" sportsmen, I don't recall you having any education in any of those fields, other than years of battling the powers that be over Cowlitz River issue.

Not to say that you don't do good work there, work that I personally respect and am glad that you are doing. I also know that you have many years of experience doing it there. However,...

I know you've heard this before, but here goes again...very little of anything that goes on with the Cowlitz bears any resemblance, other than passing, to the issues that are involved in fisheries management of wild fish.

Todd,

The so called trends you see are just short snap shots. With a dynamic population that moves up and down as rapidly as salmonid populations do, your really aren't showing any meaningfull trend. If you look at most of the graphs on WSC's web site, the only data points that really indicate a downward trend are the last 2 data points (years). The last 2 data points out of 20+ data points can't really define a meaningful trend.

If you look at the data for most of these graphs and exclude 2002, and 2003. Then the trends are flat or for many cases upwards.
To me this indicates a very weak downward trend based only on the most recent events. Not really a long term trend.

Sure steelhead have had a bad couple of years but that does not define a 20 year trend of decline. That defines a bad two years for steelhead.

The case for the puyallup is much stronger. You can remove any two data points and the trend is still obiously down.

The data for the puyallup support a general twenty year trend of decline.
The data for most other rivers shown don't.
That's why I call it junk science.
The conclusions aren't supported by the data.

Futhermore, WSR, I believe has been in place for 20+ years on the puyallup yet it has not been improved. In fact the data depict a downward trend despite WSR. Likewise for the cedar where all fishing has been closed.

What about the quilayute? It has shown a very weak increasing trend. How do you defend WSR for a river with steelhead population growth? Clearly that run can withstand some pressure, its been growing in the face of it.

So I think WSR makes perfect senes for the puyallup, but not for the quilayute. Other rivers lie in between. A reasonable standard could certainly be applied.

I just think WSR supporters and WSC should come clean as to why this is so important to them. It is not biologically justified. It may be justified from a recreational maximization or economic standpoint, but nobody has pushed that justification much.


Finally Todd, should this precendent of blanket managment be applied to other fisheries? If not, why are steelhead so special? As I've said before this is a very dangerous precedent from the perspective of future fishing opportuntity.

Clearly puget sound chinook are in worse straights than steelhead. Likewise puget sound halibut, and black rockfish are severely depressed. Shall we close retention of wild chinook, halibut, and black rockfish in the rest of the state even though there are healthy populations outside puget sound?
Such blanket closrues would result if the logic dictated by WSR is applied.

Todd
Your about as sorry as Bush was for getting you know who!

How many times has this board heard that one whenever someone put you on the spot Todd?

It doesn't seem that long ago Todd that you posted a reply back to me on this board that gave your FULL background. Have you already forgotten about that post… not me, I am pretty sure that I have the original post…you know me

I've been here on this board now for almost 4 years, and this is the first time that I can ever remember that you called yourself a "scientist"! Maybe your stretching the definition just a tad bit…you think?

That's carries just about as much water as me claiming to be a "legal Assistant" or a legal aid

Yep, Todd I am just one of those dumb old kids that got married in high school at 17, became a father at 18, worked all night/weekends , and then got my diploma and retired at the ripe old age of 39 and started guiding to pay for my play. How old did you say you were now Todd? …..and your still working as an "attorney" and a scientist both….my bad!

Oh, can you tell us what special things that you have learned in all your years of working on all those "other rivers" after you been out of school for how long now?

What is that old saying again….an eye for and eye Even Bob will understand my response to your bait.

Old Geoduck is doing some really serious butt kicking here, and it kind of nice for once to sit back and see you guys backstroke on someone that can play your number games just as good….if not better then WSC top "scientists" can

Go for it Geoduck! During the relicensing process on the Cowlitz, I learned a lot about data and how easy one can screw with the numbers to get whatever numbers out of it that you want. I was unlucky enough to spend almost a full year going through what is called Ecosystem Diagnosis and Treatment Analysis or more commonly referred to as EDT. Have you Todd , ever been through the "full course" yet ? I think not!

I got to see first hand how your kind of "science & data" can be screwed with and I called the owner on how his junk science was being used. He got all pi$$ed off, but he could not come up with how his supper scientific process had came up with the data that brought him his desired results. I highly suspect that WSC has also used the data in ways that it was not intended to be used to come up with your results.


Cowlitzfisherman

Sort of reminds me of my dirt bike days... bunch of guys sitting on their bikes talking smack in the pits... wouda, couda, shouda type stuff....eventually, a drunk always would yell " hell !!! everybodys an expert !!! "

What that has to do with this, I am not quite sure. Seemed like the thing to say.

Hindsight, otherwise known as Anal vision is 20/20

B-RUN STEELY

If that's the "best" that IDAHO can up up with, I can see why you guys will never get your fish up there!


Cowlitzfisherman

Anyone looking for good science in a fisheries management setting is a lunkhead. What are you going to do........set up a controlled double-blind experiment to test your hypothesis? Yeah, good luck with that.......

Geoduck is doing nothing more than telling us what we already know. WSR alone won't save the fish. Nobody said it would. He also appears to believe that doing nothing is better than doing something.

WSR is one step. Dig? There are many steps to take, but just standing there will only get you run over.


Hey cfm, you realize that when you graduate with a BS, or Masters, or Ph. D., they don't give you a certificate that says "cfm is hereby a scientist", right? But if you hold a Bachelor of Science degree, and sell cars, that makes you a scientist that sells cars. If a doctor becomes a Congressman, is he no longer a doctor?

But, hey, we can argue for another couple pages about who's a scientist and who isn't.............but sooner or later THAT horse is going to die from the beating, too.

Don't count old Cowlitz out Dan... If ANYONE has a degree in BS around here... it's certainly him!


Just kiddin' ya a little Cowlitz.

Dan/4Salt ….It seems that you two always come in with the humor!

But when I left high school, I had no less then three degrees!

1) Black belt in Kurcruchy;
2) Silver belt in leaning how to read BS;
3) my best degree of all …Gold belt of life!

That one takes a lot more then a couple years of someone else telling you how to think!


Cowlitzfisherman

Well, see cfm...........that's the thing about many science classes. They tell you how to think because..............that's what's right. Thinking that 2+2 = 5 REAL hard because you want to think for yourself just isn't going to take you anywhere.

I'm not even going to begin to say that being educated makes you "smart", but you don't want someone "street wise" or "wise in the ways of the world" building that guidance system for your cruise missile, now do you?

By the same token, GWB has a Harvard MBA and yet doesn't seem to grasp the concept of paying back money you borrow on credit.

Let's just say that I've been fishing around Western Washington for 30 years, and I'm not about ready to believe that wild steelhead are in as good of shape now as they were then. If somebody claims they are, then I'm skeptical of the methods/staistics/data they used to base that conclusion on.

So, my belief is that I'm going to do WHAT I CAN DO to lessen my impact on wild steelhead. I can't stop the tribes from netting, I can only go so far preventing non-tribal commercials from netting them, and aside from killing every person I see, I can't stop the environmental impacts we all have merely by living.

Anyway, I'm washing my hands of this argument now. You want to whack a wild fish because they aren't in trouble on the system you're fishing, go right ahead. Then, when the Quilayute system starts falling victim to the same pressures every other river system in the state has succumbed to, you can be the first one to gweeb about how it was the nets/commercials/environment that led to it.

Just keep in mind that all these whacked wild fish ALREADY made it past the nets/commercials/environment obstacles BEFORE you hooked the damn thing. Pheeew......it's a good thing some an angler whacked it, ate it, and shat it before the nets/commercials/environment wiped it out, huh? Nice.

OK, that's all from me, you guys carry on. I promise. Really. I mean it. See you later. Bye, then. Buh-bye.

Whack them and kill them and ate them….or hooked them, fight them to near death, and then released them to die a little later…now that paints a really good picture for true conservation!


Cowlitzfisherman

Geoduck,

A trend? Heck, what is a trend? 5 years? 10? 20? 100? 500? Hey, compared to the period immediately following the recession of glaciation, there are lots of wild salmon and steelhead around here right now. As the scientist you are, you know just as well as I that a trend period comes down to a matter of opinion. You don't think the data exhibit a trend. OK, fine. WSC thinks it does exhibit a trend, and that's fine, too. Technical disagreements occur because opinion does matter.

BTW, what little technical data there are suggests that there were a lot more wild steelhead 20, 30, and 40 years ago than there are today. Is that a trend? I think so. But a DSI aluminum company executive doesn't. He believes salmon and steelhead have recovered, based on recently available data and observations. Is he correct?

This harping about data, trends, and junk science would be humorously entertaining if I wasn't observing people I care about, "brothers of the angle," ***** about who's got the real straight skinny on killing the last of what once was. I expected this. But not until the day after the wild steelhead apocolypse.

You want to think about a trend? Try this one. No one asked me, but I've got opinions too. Here's my opinion. I think we're damn lucky to have WSR with CNR. This is symptomatic of a declining trend, but we're still a ways from the bottom. The trend is that before long we'll have WSR, but not CNR, due to too many wild steelhead populations consistently falling below the threshold of at least 80% of the escapement goal. The trend then leads to not only no CNR, but no WSR either, as rivers are permanently closed as populations hit critically low levels, and extinctions become common on one river system after another as the human population in the Pacific NW continues to grow and grow, smothering the preponderance of the native flora and fauna. And while this happens, what we will have done about it is post away on internet BBs about how there was no clear trend, and killing a few wild steelhead for the table wasn't the problem, and WSR doesn't recover populations, and killing steelhead with low CNR incidental mortality rates was just as harmful to the populations as CNK. And while this happens, most of us won't see ourselves as part of the problem, disregarding the many impacts we level against native fish populations every day be just living in this wonderful region. And while this happens, we'll disavow that our inactions, wrong actions, and all the rest of our actions contributed directly and indirectly to the very outcome people appear to be denying in these pitiful threads.

Whew! Was that Salmo with a rant? And it hasn't been a bad day, at that.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

What you just said is exactly why we need the attitudes to change across the board. How many times have we heard some say: "There's nothing I can do about the nets ...nothing I can do about the tribes overfishing...nothing I can do about overpopulation,habitat degradation....on and on and on blah blah blah

So much oxygen has been used up arguing about WSR as if it is the Holy Grail....It is not. It is a flea on and elephant....important but not the cure all end all that this board makes it out to be. Mindsets need to change and major changes in harvest need to become reality. The feel good thinking that has brought us indian casinoes and indian harvest of geoduck and king crab and sea urchins...etc etc has got to change or everything we hold dear is going to be wiped out. Try to envision what our fisheries would be like without nets

Nobody (at least the WSC) is saying that WSR is a cure all. It is just one step in the many steps we need to take. WSR is relatively cost free to the state, and to the fishing public. All the other steps will require money to begin the process. As far as Geoduck and his theory that the WSC has some unspoken motive

"I just think WSR supporters and WSC should come clean as to why this is so important to them"
it's about the fish.

Grandpa, it seems like you are trying to grasp it and thats good. Your right, what would fishing be like without nets. However, here is how it reads from some of you guys.

Step one: stop killing wild steelhead.
Step two: we won't do step one.
Step three: end of process, just live in it, things remain the same