Hopefully we can educate folks on the value of having wild steelhead runs in all our rivers.

"The Nisqually has a healthy run and we aren't going to let anything happen to it".

Read the "King of Fish" is you want to hear about repeating the mistakes of the previous generations. The book is all about the collapse of various fisheries. Pretty sad.

Talk about thread drift . . .

30 pound steelhead have never been common at any time in recorded history in any part of their range, which is probably why it is so noteworthy when one is caught.

People still fish for steelhead on the Nisqually, but they do it illegally, and if it were as commonplace as some whites think it is among the Tribe and some of the Tribe think it is among the whites, we'd hear more about it from LE. Poaching does occur on almost all the rivers, by treaty and non-treaty fishermen, from what I hear and have seen over the years. But it doesn't occur at a level that would cause it to be the proximate cause preventing steelhead recovery.

The cause of the recent decline was fishing, treaty and non-treaty, taking advantage of a period of high freshwater and marine productivity. The run fell at the same time as the other Puget Sound steelhead runs did in the early 90s. Some recent escapements have been in the 800 range, still a long way from the 2,000 goal.

Coastal comparisons with Puget Sound rivers is mainly instructive in helping us figure out what's is presently limiting Puget Sound recovery. The Hoh steelhead have a better chance at a rapid recovery because coastal steelhead are experiencing generally higher marine survival rates.

Throwing the Dosewallups into this thread is apples and oranges. The Dose, Duck, and Hamma Hamma and some other HC tribs are in a class by themselves. There is no agreement about the proximate cause of decline, but over-fishing is at least a reasonably likely cause. Some of us believe that those HC rivers wild chinook and steelhead, and maybe coho, have been depressed so low that they are below the threshold of any natural rapid recovery. There is a steelhead recovery program presently taking some of those remaining fish into a combination captive broodstock and native hatchery smolt release strategy to maximize the potential to increase those runs to the point where they could recover on their own.

There was a common, if not natural, disaster in that fishery managers have believed they could continue doing what they've always done and get a better result. It hasn't worked.

Sg

The International Game Fish Association should be deluged with letters demanding thet they stop keeping records for wild steel. It seems that this potential world record might have been a pretty strong motivator for English Pete's descision to kill it.

Now that might be the best post to come out of either of these threads...I'll look into it.

Fish on...

Todd