I know about his work about the dewatering of the chum redds...the areas I'm talking about are actually quite near some areas where Chinook redds have been allegedly dewatered, too, though I don't know much about that story.

I'm also familiar with short term dewatering, and recharging, but as you can see by the stream flow and guage height charts I posted above, this was a lowering of the river, and then a maintenance of it at that lower level, not the usual daily ups and downs that we see this time of year on the Skagit.

Fish on...

Todd

I try and steer clear of these types of topics usually due to hands tied frustration, but yes Steve the two areas which Todd speaks of previously, (between Barnaby & Chapel) were de-watered and the marker "stones" were either still, or once again out of the water after our return the first week of June. Sadly enough at the upper redd site described, during the last week of April, there was veiwed by myself and angling partner the largest steelhead we will likely ever see in our lifetimes, whose childrens did not live on... This male was holding station with approximately 8 - 10 other fish, all on well defined beds in less than 2' of depth and 12' from water's edge. (In our estimation the fish as we remember saying was, "39 f ' ing lbs." !) It used to be commonplace on June 1 to see "bomb blast" redds, sometimes with large males still present, nowadays reduced to less than half a dozen fish absent "hand grenade" mini-redds.

This unfortunate annual overnight flow reduction has long been a watched act. I might also add that the C&R waters clipped from sportsmen last season upstream of Cascade River to Bacon Creek was a highly suspect happening... Seeing as the put in for this float is at Copper Creek and most mainstem spawners in this upper stretch use predominately four locations from Copper to Marblemount to "hang out" in, why were three of these "nurseries"removed from our effective veiw ? (These top three were in the sit down and row/closed water zone above Bacon anyhow). The best quote I can muster for this would be, "you can do anything you wanna do in there if you wanna"... SCL and poachers inclusive.

I feel a bit odd in relating these Skagit River observations as up until now they have been "seasonal bummers" I have learned to shove down and live with. Hopefully someone can do something with some of these ramblings... I would volunteer to show certain potentially effective folks these internet revealed locations but have in the back of my mind a vision of Silkwood... If this closed season happens to pre-curse another without garnering an increase in numbers of wild steelhead and char, it will be sorely missed as I vow a return of my days on the Skagit to not even be so much as a "dream happening"...

Wild mushroom veiwing anyone ?

Rvr,

Let's just leave the wild 'shrooms alone...there are perfectly good farmed ones growing in my compost heap.

How's that dibbler paint treatin' ya? Sounds like you might be able to enjoy yourself without the 'shrooms today.

Fish on...

Todd

Todd,

The wild shroom reference is not a trippy joke, the seeking and veiwing of mold spore variations will become my new pastime as steelheading fades to black... You ever visited ickstreamsteel.com ?

As a matter of fact I have...:)

Fish on...

Todd

So...I just was informed of something I didn't know about the 4(d) rules...there is no automatic "no take" provision for threatened critters in the absence of a 4(d) rule allowing incidental take...I was under the impression there was.

That means that there is no federal prohibition about having the Skagit/Sauk fishery this year, and that is why the rivers have all been open since June, even though there are listed steelhead in all the Puget Sound rivers right now.

If there is no federal prohibition, and state law allows for a CnR fishery when the preseason forecast is at least 80% of the escapement goal...the forecast this year is for 90% of the esapement goal...then why is there even a question of opening the fishery or not?

I can hear all the conservation concerns as to why, and frankly I would support most of those, if those were the reasons...but I don't think they are.

CONSPIRACY ALERT:

I think that the Director would have no problem closing the fishery for one reason, and one reason alone...to punish the angler/advocates who both participate in the CnR fisheries, and called his agency into question yet again by getting the Puget Sound wild steelhead listed.

As one WDFW steelhead manager said recently, "Those guys will get what they want now"...

In a state where WDFW and the Director himself especially look to have as many possible reasons to satisfy the bare minimum required conservation measures, and constantly tries to lower the conservation bar in order to have more fisheries (especially commercial fisheries on the LCR), why is there all of a sudden a bout of conservation ethic that will result in the closure of a fishery that is shown to have no conservation impications, and is allowed by both federal and state law, and is a very popular fishery among folks who don't find the Director very popular?

END OF CONSPIRACY ALERT

Fish on...

Todd

Second conspiracy alert:

Heather said the Dept was talking with the co-managers about the run. The CNR season produces some incidental mortality. That rubs some of the tribal folks the wrong way, since the fishery directly targets the wild run. Their incidental catch this month and next falls under the higher moral ground of incidental bycatch while targeting hatchery fish. Semantics; I know.

F'n idiocy.

Awesome...they're good, because they incidentally kill them in their gillnets...we're bad, because we purposely let them go.

The tribes signed on to the "CnR seasons can be set on the 80% escapement benchline" when they signed off on the Wild Salmonid Policy, so they can take that argument and gillnet it right up.

In spite of that, I'm not surprised they'd be saying it anyway...nor would I be surprised if the State, just like on the Hoh and the Queets, just knuckled under and didn't do jack to defend our position.

Fish on...

Todd

I am super skeptical of conspiracy theories in general, but that does seem to fit all the facts and sure *sounds* awfully believeable to me.

Part of the conspiracy revolves around last fall's chum run which was overharvested by the commercial netters because the state just sat there with their dick in the dog until the commercial harvest deadline expired. Poor dog salmon.....guess you could say that the state really "screwed the pooch" last year.

So who is held accountable for that mess? My intuition tells me that "somebody" got a serious interdepartmental reaming, but it escaped the public eye for the most part so "somebody" is going to play it safe and keep returning salmonid #'s low for a while. Better safe than sorry, right?

Todd -
I do not think that the co-managers signed on to the wild salmonid policy. That is the problem with most of those management plans (the recent steelhead plan being the latest) they are just agency plans to have a meaningful hope of being effective they need to agreed to by both the co-managers and the rest of State governoment.

Regarding the current PS steelhead season still in place in spite of the ESA listing. It was my understand as expressed by the feds at the November WSC meenting that everyone was basically marking time until the Feds figured out what the rules will be with the lsitings. At that time they were guessing that they would have those in place this February or March at which time the State would know what requirements it would have to meet to qualify for a take permit.

Is that a comspiracy? I'll leave that to those who worry about such things.

Tight lines
Curt

Attention whomever signs the dotted line and closes the fishery, I know that you frequent this board and I know that you are following this topic:

I vow, here and now, that I will build a GIANT sign on my property along the upper Sauk river that reads "(John Doe) closed this river to sportfishing and this sign is built from trees that will continue to die until the fishery is opened"

I will get the logging permits and respect the buffer zones so everything will be legal. I will wire the trees with hundreds and hundreds of super-bright LED's so that it is visible from the air. I'm talking about a sign that is hundreds of feet long and lit up like a Vegas casino. You'll see the damn thing from Mars by the time I'm done with it and it WILL make the national news.

Try and hide behind your conspiracies now &*$^%*$)#!'s

Go Get Em' Justin!

I like it Kid !!!

Curt,

That's my point...the ESA does not have an automatic prohibition on take if the critters are listed as "threatened", 4(d) rules or not. If it did, there would not have been one river fishery in any river, for salmon, steelhead, trout, whitefish, or suckers, since the day the listing came down, since there are wild steelhead in the streams year 'round, and there are no 4(d) rules in place.

As I said above, I would love to think that the Department, and the Director and a few higher up cronies who you and I both know, would actually be looking at the health of the resource and making a conservation minded decision based on that...

We both know, however, who those people are, and how they operate, and that is not how they do things...as a matter of fact, they usually go out of their way to justify killing as many of whatever species we're talking about as they can possibly justify, and an extra dose of dead ones on top of that can't be justified.

That makes this decision, and specifically the timing of it and the particular fishery involved, very suspect in my mind.

Fish on...

Todd

This thread has become very interesting once again, and informative.

Salmo G and Smalma,

with all of your wisdom and experience can you please tell me why we don't have SONAR fish counts?

Is it a $ issue? Would there be confusion with hatchery vs. wild fish or late returning coho, big dollies, etc.? Seems to me that we could pinpoint the March, April and May steelhead #'s with sonar.

If it's a $ issue, then I've got a solution and that is to split the bill with the tribes. Half the fish, half the cost. Co-manage means co-pay.

I took this picture from "my other living room". This is my home away from home.

Kid,

Sonar fish counters work best where you're counting fish of the same species, of the same size (targets), and it clean laminar flow. It's that last one that has made sonar devices impractical for river installations in western WA. The debris load and frequent turbulent flow conditions throw the electronic counts as far off as they are with existing predictive methods, only at significantly higher costs. We have trouble enough with these systems in the relatively clean and smooth flowing water in the forebays behind dams. The so-called noise messes up the signals which messes up the counts.

Sg