I think hooking mortailiy on wild steelhead is more like less than 1% among CnR anglers.
here is why.. hooking mortality studies done in BC indicate that the largst amount of mortality came from loss of blood due to deep hooking. NOT due to the stress of being hooked. In fact studies have shown that the vast majority of hooked and released steelhead survive with NO ill effects.
Wearing a steelhead out to exhaustion or stressing them beyond what their bodies can tollerate simply is a red hearing and seldom or never happens. Hooked and released fish die when they have massive blood loss.. such blood loss comes from barbed hooks, multiple pointed hooks and bait that is swallowed. CnR fishermen rarely use trebels barbs or bait..
therefore CnR'd fish rarely have sever blood loss due to hooking injury and therefore survive at an extremely high rate.

Now would you like to explain why you think it's more on the order of 10%???

Simple answer to not returning punch cards. Idaho has a deal on hunting tags that works pretty well. If you don't fill out a harvest report for any big game tag you are issued, you can't buy a new licence for the next year. This applys regardless of if you shot something or not. I assume your licence and tags etc are computerized, so would be easy to implement.
Would help with your counts etc

RA,

Less than 1% hooking mortality is ridiculously optimistic.

Hooking mortality studies show ~3-5% hooking mortality on adult salmonids in the river. However, these studies are generally carried out by expert anglers and fish handlers (ie fish biologists and guides).

Given that most CNR fishers don't have this high level of expertise I would expect mortality to be higher. 10% seems like a conservative estimate, as I have certainly witnessed lots of wild steelhead handling that was less than gentle.

Maybe this keeping the fish in the water reg will help with that. . .

BTW do you feel the same way about wild steelhead as you do wild chinook. If not why not?

RA3,

My point is not really about the actual percentage of CnR mortality. I was refering to Todds comments, that actual harvest numbers probably are higher than reported. Not all CnR fishermen are card-carrying experts like you(I think your card says PETA at the top). So I expect CnR mortality is higher than you think. There are plenty of threads to see the commennts of experts here, I'm not looking to discuss percentages.

This may very well be a culture conflict. You said:

,

Rob, I dont know how to tell you this without making you cry, but that is the biggest bunch of crap I've ever read. If this is what your position believes, then it is a culture problem. It's a fish. If harvesting them is legal, some of us will do what man has done for thousands of years. We will eat them. And if you ever again say that I or anyone who bought a license to do so, is wrong for eating a fish, your going to hear from me.

WSR is proof to me if you dont participate, you better lubricate. Your view is the minority. I can respect your passion, I can support improvements in our management of fisheries. I cannot see your hypocritical need to treat these fish as pets, and expect everyone else to do the same.


Hairlip.

Rob -
It might be well to remember that very few anglers have the extraordinary angling skills that you have so comparing what your impacts may be to what those of the general angler population's might be would result in grossly underestimating the impacts. My limited experience and observation would seem to indicate that the Canadian estimates of hooking mortality are in the ball park.

I would agree that on waters managed with selective gear restrictions the hooking mortality would likely be lower than those with the general regulation. However agian remember that nearly all the waters to be managed under no wild fish retention are not selective gear waters. Again my observations are that most anglers are fishing with bait, barbs, and/or trebles.

If one truly cares about wild steelhead and wishes to error on the side of the resource than assigning hooking mortality imapcts in the 5 to 10% would seem to me to be prudent.
At least until such times as all fisheries are managed under selective gear restrictions and anglers have demostrated that they will handle the fish with the needed care.

Tight lines
S malma

Todd says:

"There is no way that NETS NETS NETS is the only answer as to why OP steelhead runs are declining, so long as we "sportsmen" are harvesting just as many."

Todd ...You are so focused on WSR which is good but merely a pinky in the dike that you may have started believing some crazy stuff.

Sportsmen catch just as many fish as the tribal nets??.....Man you gotta believe in the tooth fairy. Since no non-tribal person is allowed to monitor the tribal catch and the tribes have been proven over and over again not to give a crap about conservation of any kind be it fish, game or fowl or shellfish do you honestly in your heart of hearts believe their nets do not catch the most fish? You also have argued that most wild steelhead are released now anyway by sportsmen so how could you believe that the gill nets don't out kill every one else when it comes to wild steelhead?

You don't seem like a naive kind of guy usually but I am starting to wonder.

Now heres a list of things we should focus on... work on improving a couple of these to start with, and build on that. Make punchcards lke hunting tags, dont send them in, you dont get a new one. Demand better enforcement of our CURRENT rules, work on a more reliable system of tribal reporting, and go from there... I like that list Todd.

grandpa,

I'm not trying to say that anyone is catching more than anyone else...I do know that both sporties and tribes are catching a lot, and that the reported numbers for both are probably not very accurate.

My point was that if we are going to hold harvest up as a reason for the decline of steelhead, then the several thousand killed by sportsfishermen are part of the problem, too, regardless of how many the tribes are catching.

Sorry for the misunderstanding...

Fish on...

Todd

I am all for harvesting steelhead.. thats why the state spends millions each and every year to produce millions of fish secifically for that reason... There is excellent opportunity to harvest hatchery salmon and steelhead throughout the state nearly year around.. If all thoes millions of hatchery steelhad are not enough for you then well you are selfish.

If my position seems radical to some of you i am sorry but i am not gonna sit around and watch the last great steelhead fisheries in the state of Washington be destroyed by an bunch on "people" who'd idea of a landfill is dumping their refuse off a bridge on the Calawah. or use the Olympic national park as their personal garbage dump without raising a stink about it.

Wild steelhead release statewide forever would be a great thing Even if every river recovered to full capacity. I am all in favor of any no kill regs on wild salmonids no matter how healthy the run or how the regulation came to be. I don't care if the reg is legal or constitutional I want it.. I would support a constitutional ammendment saying no harvest on wild steelhead forever.

Of you guys had grown up on rivers rivers like the Washougal where the wild run was destroyed by sport harvest you'd feel exactly the same way...


The absence of harvest opportunity is not the same as lost fishing opportunity!!!!

As far as fishing for wild steelhead it should always be done by single barbless baitless hooks. I like drifting eggs as much as anyone but it's just not wise over wild fish..

RA3,

You obviously care very deaply for wild salmonids.

How in good conscience could you ever fish where they are present, you might kill one by accident?

geoduck single barbless no bait and gear heavy enough to quickly land and release fish.
nearly all hooking mortality comes from blood loss due to a fish being deeply hooked.
avoiding deeply hooked fish is extremely easy and any novice can do it. you just can't do it with a sandshrimp or a gob of eggs.

Rob ... I'll disagree. But it's conditional. Bait can be deadly to both upstream and downstream fish fished certain ways. I've been fishing a bit of shrimp the past few years in a newer style for us and well in excess of 90% of the fish are hooked in one place: smack in the snout, over and over. Of all the different methods I fish, never have I seen so many fish hooked in the exact same place.

Just an FYI

A culture war.

Perhaps.

Elitists.

Perhaps.

But when all the anti-WSR folks whine about the loss of "opportunity" for them, remember this as fewer and fewer streams have healthy runs and viable fisheries:

WSR only forces an angler to change one thing, harvesting the fish.

On the other hand, harvest-based fisheries have infringed upon many's "rights" by forcing the fisheries into complete closure.

Naysayers frequently point out the lack of turnaround a number of areas. It's true. However, I believe the Nisqually thread that is currently undergoing discussion shows how slow a steelhead stock can be to rebound even with no fishing.

Thus my drive to protect what is left becomes even greater knowing that when things finally collapse, it's a very long climb to get back above the clouds.

Steelhead are not salmon, the life histories are too diverse and I belive that's one of the reasons we've had so much difficulty in their management.

I believe it's also the reason that their road to recovery has in nearly all instances, taken much longer than most salmon species.

Educate us Bob. That's sounds very interesting. I'd love to hear the details. I have issues with using bait in WSR areas for obvious reasons that I'm sure your already aware of, but maybe your new method can change my thinking about it.

"harvest-based fisheries have infringed upon many's "rights" by forcing the fisheries into complete closure."

Bob are you refering to harvest-based sport fisheries? If so I really think you are way off base. I think that it would hard to come up with some facts showing that a harvest-based sport fisheries has ever infringed upon another sport fisher by creating a complete closure.

thats not true.

Ya gotta booka trip to learn all my little secrets Bruce BUt I'll give you a hint ... it involves floats

Ok

But I would think that it would be a good tip for your board and it should make you feel good knowing how many wild steelhead you'd be saving from all the swallowed bait.

Boater1, please pass along the other things that change.

Bruce ... two instances of complete closure on the Hoh in late season because we were not going to meet escapement based on the returns / harvest up to that date. Had the sport impact been reduced by 90% (giving a generous 10% mortality on the fish that were harvested that would have been released) ... we would have made escapement and the fishery would have remained open.

There's two specific examples that affected me directly.

Now on the the 100+ rivers that are now closed in this state, you're going to say harvest didn't play a role in the decline of the run in a single one of them?

If so, you've lost every bit of credibilty you may have been clinging to

How come I expected that very comment from you Bruce? :rolleyes:

But then again, they might learn to hook ten times as many fish and play them on light line and kill them that way, so I won't