Yes! I have watched more than one drift down out of sight. And I have seen dead chinook on the bottom of pools on the Vedder River.

I don't know what mortality might have been in a fly rod. Probably similar to bait as many fly caught fish are hooked in a nonlethal place, whereas many bait caught fish have taken the bait deeply. But many fly hooked fish are fought longer than bait hooked fish, so maybe a wash. The point is coho in estuaries are very tender fish. I think the quoted study was about right. There is a very high mortality rate from C&R on coho that are very recent arrivals from the salt.

The Wynoochee is closed because there are no hatchery fish planted in the river. Any hatchery fish are lost fish from Van Winkle creek that leads to the Aberdeen Hatchery. Closure is to protect native runs according the regional office.

The netting season here is specificaly set up this year to prevent large numbers of Chinook from being caught in the Chehalis river system. If the mortality rate is that high for catch and release I would suspect that the mortality rate is even higher for gill netted fish even with the so called recovery boxes.

+100. I'm sure we all agree on that!

Pretty sure Tangle and recovery boxes have been tried before on coho, don't think it worked to well. Not sure what they have changed for this test their currently doing.

Ah the boxes.............I doubt they work. We lost summers perfect shape in tubes and suspended in net pens at Porter. We learned until the water temp dropped the hens would not come back. Bucks no prob.

Hump Dan could not get the brood back taken in tide water. Unless they harden up and water temps are down sport or commercial I doubt survival of released fish is much. In the Chehalis you have to get above my house as the salt mix ends here.

I doubt Oregon is planning on giving up the terminal fisherys for any of these new methods, there up and running. They don't have the catch sharing issues that a river fishery would have and all species except for springers are targeted by sport fisherys first with the gillnets mopping up the excess and are fully endorsed as a selective fishery by the HSRG report. If the target is excess lower river hatchery stock, just move them.

And I try so hard to let them go as fast I can and in as good a shape as I can. This is depressing to think that 3, 4 or all 5 natives I let go last died anyway after so much effort. I got wet to my waist to let 2 of them go and in this tidal water that can be cold and nasty to fish in the rest of the day. Not to mention the chance a seal will try to take one off the bank after you land it and is still attatched to your line.

I will still put out the effort to let natives go when it changes to hatchery only but it is still a lot of effort for a 50% survival rate. Worth it but still depressing.

Doc has been pretty quite but in the past Francis put a lot of effort into trying get his arms around C&R mortality. Simple fact is C&R for Steelies seems to work but does it reduce spawners and repeaters, probably but not like salmon.

C&R has a huge take in salmon and farther upstream safer it becomes. From a personal side try this. I sat in many years of meetings with agency staff and at NOF to hear Ron Warren and Kirt Hughes apply a 10% hooking mortality to Chinook released in the bay makes one wonder what ethics exist if they do,WDF&W in harvest. Both those guys know full well it is total BS and the bay should have been closed this year. As well as South Monte down stream until at least the 10th of October to allow the Summers to clear. No non treaty nets until Chinook have cleared or whatever to zero Chinook impacts if they had a season. Treaty harvest should have been restricted and scheduled in target weeks with reduced Chinook impacts.

That is what should have happened in the Chehalis ( Hump little different ) but you see what we have instead. Greed? No not really but rather business as usual. You see ethics and true conservation motives ARE NOT what drives GH management be it sport, commercial, or tribal. It is all about killing fish and sporties do it just as do others just differently but WDF&W .................. that agency ( as to harvest ) sold its soul and any ethical standards a long time ago and are really void of any now days. Duplicity, deception, and down right dishonesty are the standard requirements to manage harvest.

It is what it is.

Quiet for a reason..... been away from the keyboard and actually catching fish instead of reading/posting about it.

But never quiet for very long....

For the record, there was never any "bonk the first two" language put in the regs because it was NEVER proposed at NOF.

What was proposed (and passed) was a provision to kill the first two coho regardless of fin status. This would allow anglers to limit out as quickly as possible and promptly cycle out of the fishery, thereby minimizing chinook impacts by getting the fleet off the water as fast as possible. This is how the plan was sold at NOF, as chinook conservation, but "kill the first two coho" was NOT made mandatory as it would be impossible to enforce.

It is ENTIRELY optional.

Regardless, this is what we are encouraging all participants in the fishery to do.... kill the first two coho for every angler in the boat, and go home. If we as a community cannot show the necessary discipline and restraint to do this, then you can bet your a$$ this type of unique wild harvest opportunity will NOT be made available in the future.

As far as the numbers of dead wild coho, assuming a very modest 20% H&R mortailty, the anticipated encounter rate of 20% H:W was expected to yield the same number of dead wild coho in either of three scenarios:

1) ZERO wild retention (clip only)
2) Up to ONE wild retention.
3) Up to TWO wild retention

Again that was under the assumption of a 20% hooking mortality and a 20% encounter rate of marked fish. IT'S ALL A WASH. As long as the mortality rate is well below the encounter rate, then a mark-selective fishery makes sense. But once the mortality rate exceeds the mark rate, the numbers shift in favor of wild retention.

Studies clearly show the mortality on releasing tidewater coho is much greater than 20%. My own observations and "gut feeling" is that it's much closer to 80% when averaged over the entire fleet.

This issue of survival rate in salt water and estuary areas is not limited to coho. Any of the salmonid species that appear in the estuary and river tidewater areas with their scales loose are vulnerable to high incidental mortality rates. I think Eyefish's gut feeling is too high based on my personal experience using both purse seines and gillnets to capture bright salmon for radio tagging. We never experienced 80% mortality, but never got radio tag signals from anywhere from 25 to 35% of fish captured in salt water bay or tidewater river areas.

The only fish I've seen that could be reliably handled in salt water and get fresh water survival rates were chum salmon that were already showing signs of sexual maturity while in salt water - that is, they were coloring up and developing the thick slime layer that is common once fish are well above tidewater.

If one wants to release salt water and tidewater fish with the highest probability of survival, the key is to not net the fish or handle it. Use one of those hooks on a stick, grab the leader, slide the hook down the leader and flip the hook out of the fish's mouth without ever touching the fish. Do that and mortality rates, whatever they are, will be the lowest possible outside of not fishing.

Sg

I'd say that magnitude of loss is at least in the same ballpark seen by ADFG in their stock assessment projects.

On the Kenai River, the coho research projects killed 40% of the coho handled in tidewater.... 4 out of 10 dead just by touching them, without any associated hooking event and the certainty of added stress that goes along with it.

[quote=eyeFISH]
As far as the numbers of dead wild coho, assuming a very modest 20% H&R mortailty, the anticipated encounter rate of 20% H:W was expected to yield the same number of dead wild coho in either of three scenarios:

1) ZERO wild retention (clip only)
2) Up to ONE wild retention.
3) Up to TWO wild retention

Again that was under the assumption of a 20% hooking mortality and a 20% encounter rate of marked fish. IT'S ALL A WASH. As long as the mortality rate is well below the encounter rate, then a mark-selective fishery makes sense. But once the mortality rate exceeds the mark rate, the numbers shift in favor of wild retention.

The quote from Doc is the idea used to justify the current season with wild coho take. It also gets fishermen off the water faster and reduces Chinook H&R mortality. The math works if one assumes each fisherman catches a limit on each trip. (Typical of PP readers) In that case the same number of wild Coho die regardless of the make-up of hatchery and wild. As usual, the result is a function of the assumptions that go into it.

On the Chehalis the fish checkers find that each fisherman averages about 0.15 fish per trip when the limit is based on hatchery only retention. Assuming the same H/W ratio of 20% then the same fisherman also released 0.6 wild fish per trip, killing 0.12 with hooking mortality. With the bonk anything rule we would expect the fisherman to return with 0.75 fish per trip, including 0.6 dead wild Coho. He will probably make more trips because of this which will also increase the wild Coho take. This real world situation will result in more wild coho killed per trip than a hatchery only rule. Last year with one wild Coho allowed in the limit for part of the season, we saw the average fish per angler trip jump to about 0.45 and we all thought it was a fabulous year.

If there was ever a poster child year for in season management of wild Coho take, this should be the year.

I have one thing to say about fishing in Grays Harbor, I can fish for Coho all day long, all season long and not hook a single Chinook if I try hard enough or I can at least limit the number I hook regardless of the time of year. I have not hooked a single Chinook in the Chehalis river basin for 4+ years. I have hooked and landed well over 30 Coho though. Anyone who can't do this needs to learn how or go home. This goes for the ocean, bays, lower river, upper river and anywhere else. Yes it can be harder to keep from hooking a chinook in the ocean but if the first 2 fish hooked are Chinook it is time to get the poles out of the water and move. As for the bays and lower river, I know people who fish from boats and rarely if ever hook Chinook and they limit out on Coho on a regular basis. if they can avoid Chinook then it can be done by most everyone who fishes. Again, if you can't figure out, learn how or go home.

I will admit this though, I can not target hatchery Coho and not catch Wild Coho. My ratio is probably 10:1 hatchery to Wild but I can have days where I will catch nothing but Wild when everyone else is catching hachery using the same spinners and gear. Once I fugre that one out I will share it with everyone and become a fishing god. lmao

As for the tribal gill netters, check out the season they have in Grays Harbor before making that accusation. I do not support tribal netting but I refuse to let them be dragged through the mud when the season they have have been set to avoid the highest impact on Chinook. They are letting recreational fishers fish almost an entire month before they do. Why? Because they know that we can avoid Chinook if we try. A net in the water can not be fished to avoid Chinook impact. If we can not, as fisherman, who should know how to fish for Coho avoid catching massive numbers of Chinook then we don't deserve to be allowed to fish at all. I hate it when they are in the water and the ones I am friends with know it but they have their rights too so I stay home or go somewhere else when they are netting.

For those that sit and target Chinook and cause this headache, there needs to be a $2500 fine per Chinook hooked and fought. All tackle, poles, gear, vehicle and whatever else confiscated and auctioned. All money raised used to fund habitat restoration. Throw in that they have to pay all court costs if convicted. Think that it is too hard to enforce, make the law plain simple and clear, hook X Chinook consecutively or in a certain time frame and fight them to the boat or bank and you are targeting them. I never have to worry about this because I know how and where to fish for Coho. If you simply can not manage to hook a Coho regardless of how you fish, then go home and fish another day.

Soft bite, I agree and I would expect a lot more peole to fish a lot more often since they can keep any Coho for the first month. What the impact will be I don't know but this needs to be one year that the best records possible need to be kept to see what the impact turns out to be.

fish_4_all -
You are not suggesting that there are folks who will be fishing Grays Harbor this season who will be targeting or hoping to be catch a Chinook are you?

Tight lines
Curt

What have you been smoking?

No, I would never say that. 7 years of hearing about it and seeing it doesn't mean it will happen this year does it. I hope it doesn't but I bet I can find 3-5 places on opening day where it does. I will pm you where if you promise not to be one of them.

According to their web site they do not start netting here until Oct. 10th. The river opens Sept 16th. Chinook are pretty much gone in the lower river by then or at least they have been for the last 3 years according to what I see come out of the gill nets. If I am seeing the wrong schedule please let me know when they are netting, http://209.206.175.157/Fishing%20Regs/chehalis%20commercial.pdf
that's their published schedule. 11 days in the river instead of 25+ isn't going to help limit Chinook catches? Starting 2 weeks later isn't going to do the same? Show me a different netting schedule and I will retract/alter my comment. Have you compared their netting schedule from last year?

As for the punishment for sitting on and killing Chinook for fun, I think what I posted is a good place to start. I know people who think they need to be have their boats taken out from under them while fishing or simply be sunk on the spot.

As for what am I smoking, nothing, I quit smoking completely 2 weeks ago. If you want to blame it on that then go ahead, I don't.

Last year's October QIN schedule.

Area 2A, 2A-1, and 2D

October 4th thru 6th, noon to noon

October 11th thru 14th, noon to noon

October 18th thru 20th, noon to noon

There was more in November targeting late coho before they went to 5 days a week in December for 6 months.

By the way, congrats on quitting smoking.

you guys seem to think this is a wild survival issue and until you understand that the issue now and always has been for the inside fisherman is an allocation issue. Unless the sports fisheman start fighting for their allocation of kill able fish in both Chinook and Coho our inside fishery is in danger. As it was 20 years ago it now is again we will not get a fair harvest without fighting for a fair alocation and I don't mean from the Tribes. They have more in common with us than any other group. This mortalitiy issue is a ruse! There is not hook mortality issue if the allocation is adequate