Where does someone see the current daily catch #'s by the tribes on the Skagit Tillerdemon?

I have made many many phone calls to the WDFW and they refer me to the Tribes. I contact the Tribes, who then say that they do not have that information on hand and it doesn't even become available to WDFW for roughly 3 weeks. Also, he said that if they did have that information on hand, it would have to go through a certain # of hands before they could approve a release of that info to the public.

The gentleman at the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission told me that the Indian fisheries monitor their own catch and report the numbers to the WDFW in 3 weeks? So....who is monitoring them daily and their catch counts?

Bunch of BS!

I just got Last Thursdays catch total 219 Springers 24 of which were wild and 22 more wild steelhead. Still no Sockeye (thats what they say they are after). One more day of netting is schedueled this week.

I think Thrasher has found a problem. Self-policing after it goes through the spin cycle.

If anyone gets any paper other than the Reel News to print any negative story on anything an indian tribe does THAT would be newsworthy.....Do not hold your breath. To the general public at large they are just feeding their poor families like they have been doing for thousands of years. Poor things....

Someone I know who lives on the skagit around lyman photographed and videotaped the upper skagit tribe cleaning female chum salmon and disposing them into the river, the male chums were just disposed into the river... anyways he got someone from the skagit valley herald to write an article, the conlusion of the article... IT WAS PERFECTLY LEGAL FOR THE TRIBES TO NET FISH, KNOWINGLY WASTE THEM ND KEEP THE ROE! Anyways He has lots of videotape of this sort of thing going on up there, as it happens every year. Last September the spawning beds were wiped of Chinook after several weeks of netting for Humpy's (his story not mine), which by the way was closed for sportfisherman. I beleive he has sent the video to CCA, but not totally sure.

Thrasher,
Yes it's a bunch of BS that the tribes are not required to report there catch publicly.... I will not reveal my source of info as to protect them, I will say it's a valid source with no BS!!!!

Nets were back in last night. Wild steelhead on sale at Mt Vernon Thriftway for 2 bucks a pound.

AP70,

If indeed wild steelhead are being sold at a Mt. Vernon store, I think if the Wildcat Steelheaders have a single hair on their collective asses, they ought to be able to get that changed.

Sg

What is the MV thriftway? Never heard of that store. Do you have an address?

I heard and tribal member say when asked about netting the skagit river say, " they call it a sockeye fishery which I don't understand cause there are no sockeye in the river until july, but we are netting anyway with a 5 and 1/4 quater inch mesh."

I remember a string right here a few months ago where "Indians do not target wild Steelhead and Salmon"
"The Indian bycatch is minimal"
"It is all about habitat"

Just thought folks would like to know NWIFC is completely wrong here…..unless the Dept posted the FRAM results wrong here: http://wdfw.wa.gov/fish/final_chinook_coho_fram_model_runs_2008-2009.pdf

The FRAM model using the agreed to list of fisheries is located on the WDFW site click on Fishing/Shellfishing > Salmon/Steelhead > Under “Other Information” link labeled “Final Chinook (2108) and Coho (0824) FRAM model runs based on 08-09 Agreed-to Fisheries”

In Table 6A it shows the ER on natural stocks by stock and fishery. Seems like the NonTribal total ER is 58.5% ….which means the Indian rate is 41.5% of the total (100%-58.5%=41.5), not the 27% you mention here Kari….could you explain yourself? Looks like the final FRAM run is a new posting on the WDFW website, or was this data not available to you when you quoted the tribes had 27% of the total impacts on Stilly? I thought through NOF the tribes and state constantly run FRAM models to see what the list of fisheries are actually doing….so why would you initially state a percentage that was lower than what was modeled in the final preseason agreement...seems like another attempt to mask what is really a Chinook/Steelhead fishery by calling it a sockeye fishery….and how many sockeye were expected to be caught by now….and how many actually have been?

WOW another revelation...the tribes exploiting runs of fish without regard to wild status....pretending to target one species while netting another and selling fish no one else can even legally catch.

Oh and Salmo....you better write to your congressman to start the ball rolling to get the treaties cancelled so the tribes can't catch whatever they please whenever they please and sell whatever they catch whenever and where ever they want...WDFW can't stop them and neither can any fishing club no matter how noble their cause.

I really sympathize with the people up around the Skagit who have worked so hard to revive the Chinook run only to see the usual suspects netting the hell out of them....Habitat restoration and hard work to restore depressed runs should not result in more opportunities for the tribes to net us back to square one...but it does.

rojoband -
Thanks for posting the link to the final 2008 FRAM run. You are correct; if folks want to understand where are fish are going that is good place to start.

However a couple points. When I do the math in the Table 6A you referred to I get a break-out of Washington catches of Stillaquamish Chinook as follows -
Treaty - 32%
non-try Comm. - 5%
Sport -63%

The information in those tables are useful in looking at large scale issues but remember that the data in those tables are summaries and are typically rounded to the nearest tenth of per cent or nearest fish. The result is that due to rounding errors one can get different results - this may explain the differents between Kari's 27% and final run's number of 32% of the tribal impacts; (if you add the impacts in table 6a we get 12.8% while the non-rounded value is something at 14.8%). Regardless an important point is that the sport fisheries still is using the lion's share of the Washington impacts.

Regarding the timing of the insertation of the Skagit fisheries. It may well have been that Skagit Tribes brought up their desire for those sockeye/Chinook fisheries early in the process those fisheries was not included in the modeling efforts until late in the process - until such fisheries are modeled it is impossible to know what the impacts will be and how other fisheries may have to "shaped" to adjust if total impacts on stocks of concern exceed allowable limits. During the NOF process that the early wish list of fisheries (both treaty and non-treaty) includes a number of suggests/ideas that do not end up in the "final package" of seasons.

Tight lines
Curt