Shut down fishing and see what happens? Isn't that exactly what we did with wild steelhead?
So what do you think happened?
Nothing, that's what, in spite of over 25 years of no retention and no commerical harvest, no ESA listed steelhead stock has been delisted.
So why in the world would we try that failed recovery option again? [/quote]


You have the policy wrong, but your not in Puget Sound. Tribes harvest steelhead. Bycatch in non tribal in the ocean with silvers? C&R of wild steel was promoted on fishing shows and in the magazines, in the 90's. Then you have everyone trying to get a picture of one for the scrap book and the bulletin board in the tackle shop. People that dont know how to handle a wild fish and guys who use lousy gear that breaks of or run up to the head waters of the green in the summer with a 12 foot noodle rod, before anyone knew what a noodle rod was and spend the day hooking fish on 4 and 2 pound test leader.

Keith, 6-8 years? They are not magically going to get around the tribal nets, or get past the recreational fishery down stream of the tribs. 6-8 years is barely two generations of the initial brood stock in the closure experiment.

SG?
How much spawning goes on below the dams? How effective is it with mass fluctuations in water level? If the wild fish are not spawning down below on the lewis and cowlitz, then how are the hatchery fish jeopardizing anything? All we see right now is large blanket of hatchery reduction in rivers that, may yield no increases. I dont know what the spawning activity is in the NFL below the dams, but since the collectors are $50-100 million and they are working on the first one, its going to be a long time before that experiment is going to yield results, since there are three dams. I do not know what collection facilities are in use now.

The steelhead mgt plans being developed? (which may have openings) Should be focusing on rivers without dams, which have the best chance of success, in the shortest period of time. The cowlitz in particular doesnt have good collection and all the good spawning water above the dams is going to waste. We need designated hatchery rivers like the cowlitz in order to keep recreational fishing going, while some of the other rivers are managed in other ways.

We have plenty of plans in PS that need to be tweaked. The Green river plants are limited to Soos creek, shutting down perhaps 40 miles of river for hatchery steelhead. The sky gates will be left open and a couple rain events will help push them into the gates.

Whatever is done for recovery, it wont make any difference if the fish cannot get back to use it.

SG?
How much spawning goes on below the dams? How effective is it with mass fluctuations in water level? If the wild fish are not spawning down below on the lewis and cowlitz, then how are the hatchery fish jeopardizing anything? All we see right now is large blanket of hatchery reduction in rivers that, may yield no increases. I dont know what the spawning activity is in the NFL below the dams, but since the collectors are $50-100 million and they are working on the first one, its going to be a long time before that experiment is going to yield results, since there are three dams. I do not know what collection facilities are in use now.

[/quote]

All spawning is below the Merwin Dam in the NF of the Lewis... There is a broodstock program starting in action as we speak... We'll see what happens... Sure has helped the Kalama River....

Keith

There are at least two kind sod scientists working on salmonid recovery. There are the managers, who by and large believe in MSY and that fish populations/species are independent of each other. That is, for example, management of coho has nothing to do with steelhead.

The second group is the ecologists, who see the world as interconnected and disruptions of one part of the ecosystem show up elsewhere.

The management agencies are dominated by the MSY group; ergo fishing is not a problem.

Speaking about steelhead, we have seen up in BC that when you increase a stream's productivity (they use fertilizer and, later, wild pink salmon) that the steelhead responded. Even in poor marine survival years, the increased productivity produced more smolts which gave more adults back. I have been told that the same thing is being seen in the Puyallup watershed as pink escapements climb.

Switching to coho, there are some ongoing studies in Alaska that looked at the relationship between catch of coho from a stream and number of pinlks spawning there. At zero pinks, the catch was about 1,000. At about 2 kilograms of pinks per square meter of stream the catch was about 6,000. What this says to me is that a stream has a productive capacity that is directly tied to amount of salmon that spawn there. If we want to manage for few spawners (MSY) we get some catch. If we want to manage for the ecosystem, we may get more catch.

So, the fact that SW WA or teh coast have not rebounded under little of no steelhead kill doesn't say that harvest is not the problem. It may say that steelhead harvest is not controlling. Even then, I wounder about what the actual kill is.

Data that I have seen from the coast suggests that there used to be pinks, chum, and lots more chinook and coho spawning there. IF increasing productivity of the streams will increase steelhead then overfishing remains a big problem.

C-man,
We saw on Fall Creek in the Willamette system that after a couple years of dumping carcasses in the biologists told us that there was more everything from bugs to resident trout. It made a difference in that one little waterway.
We have stripped the forest covering, cut returning numbers to a fraction so there are no nutrients, and then, as Keith points out, we fish the bejeezus out of what's left.
While the differences of opinion about the effects of selective fishing and hatchery catch may persist, I think we all agree that habitat restoration is a no brainer.

PS The carcasses chop up better in the shredder if they are still frozen. What a mess.

nice loop. Charting the dates of steelhead hatch and nutrient loads in the river is something Id like to see. One carcass is feeding other species.

The pink return in 09 came to more than 5 million fish on the green. The counters were having a lot of trouble find KING redds.

http://www.kgw.com/lifestyle/grants-getaways/The-Last-Wild-Run-94002944.html


Nice little clip

Things that cause one to say HMMMM!

As alluded by Lead Bouncer the Green River over the last decade has seen a spectular increase in pink salmon abundance and at the same time has seen a steady decline in both Chinook and steelhead. Adding nutrients is not a magic bullet but rather a way to address one of the many of the pieces limiting anadromous fish production in our local rivers.

Tight lines
Curt

Would be nice to know if salmon are also part of that river to determine the source of the nutrients. Is there any information about what percentage of wild steelhead die after they spawn?

Only about 12-15% make a second spawning run, virtually all females...I suspect quite a bit more than that don't die immediately upon spawning, but make it back out to saltwater and are either too weak to escape predators, or just plain too weak to survive...

Fish on...

Todd

http://www.wildsalmoncenter.org/pdf/salmonberry_white_paper_2008.pdf

I think the King fishery has been hammered into oblivion, by the internet gang to the south.


http://www.dfw.state.or.us/resources/fishing/docs/2010_Coastal_Fall_Chinook_Seasons.pdf

The rail has been losing money and they had to give up land right of way to help pay the bills.
Increase logging over the years has contributed to the slides. The Federal taxpayers have been pouring money into a losing business venture. Even the artificial raised bank to accommodate the rail is increasing the water speed and errosion.

Its a black hole.

You ever check out the Grays river? It's very similar. Logged to death all through the headwaters and slides every year. Heck if we get 3/4's of an inch of rain it goes to 1-2 feet of visibility and sometimes blows out color wise at regular flows.... Fact is, that river still meets escapement. Why? Doesn't have the steady fishing pressure of the rest of the readily available, easy accessable SW WA streams.... Beat the fish to death and you wipe them out.... SO don't preach to me about the habitat factor, its smoke up my ass... Although it has some merit, it's very little.

I won't be suprised when the seasons get shorter on rivers like the EF of the Lewis, Washougal, etc.... They get HAMMMERED..... The only thing that will save them is to cut the hatchery plants to next to nothing if nothing at all. At least that keeps the meat hunters at home.... But sadly enough, you cut the meat hunters you typically cut the gear boys out... For some screwball reason the bug chuckers try and take the river over..... Explain that??

Keith

I have seen 95% of the female steelhead that went upstream come back down. Males are much lower as they essetially spawn till they die. been records of a few of them getting stuck in low water and spending the whole summer in the creek.

An interesting piece of information coming out of the acoustic tagging is that a steelhead my spawn in river A and come back the next year in river B. Up in BC they saw a male spawn in two separate rivers the same year.

The strongest steelhead populations appear to have 20-30 and p to about 70% repeats.

As to pinks on the Green, or other places, the carcasses need to be where the target fish rears. If the steelhead rear in the upper watershed tribs, the 10 kazillion in the middle/lower mainstem doesn't help them.

There were some recent papers that looked at the relationship of N Pacific pinks and Chinook. The relationship was essentially inverse. More pinks, fewer Chinook. As I recall, the mechanism was unknown. Could be the pinks cleaning out the larder when the leave. Could be that the estuary/ocean conditions favor one over the other.

Think about what that river could do with some "moderate" habitat improvement!! Those must be some incredible genes, or incredibly lucky genes. I'm not taking away from the "beat 'em to death" part, I'm adding to it. The numbers from late 1800s through mid 1900s bear that out just fine. But, geez, just give those suckers a landing spot and what could happen.

Bug chuckers are used to fishing but not catching, many of them anyway.

Precisely, and now you have the Wind River with significant increases in wild fish.... Odd isn't it?

Keith

This has been an interesting thread with some real discussion for a change. Please keep up the good work.........thanks

in the last couple years however, i've seen the pressure on the grays system go way through the roof. 10 years ago you rarely ever saw another guy fishing it. not uncommon to see 20 or 30 rigs at the hatchery these days(mostly oregon plates), and cars at every pullout(ok, it's not like there's a ton of access), despite the fact that the hatchery plants got slashed big time.

i will agree that those rivers have quite a certain jethro element that "fish" them...the area between wahkiakum county's eastern border, to the ocean, to willapa bay is kind of like "land of the lost"

Both the Grays and the Washougal have weirs part of the year.

So your saying that hundreds of stock assessments by state and federal fisheries biologist that say the leading factors for recovery are habitat related issues are all full of crap?
It just strikes me as odd that your solutions don't seem to show up on any scientific radar screens.
What makes you right and them wrong?

Nothing makes me right but I'm not an armchair biologist.. Just a fisherman that's spent a few days on a few streams catching a few fish..... I'm just saying....

It sure is funny after nearly 25 years of CnR that #'s haven't changed much....... Don't ya think?

It sure is funny how other systems that are so far behind with human populations are now faultering as their populations and popularity grow.. Kind of ironic, isn't it??

Keith