where did you hear that ?

WDFW is testing commercial selective fishing gear to keep strays off spawning beds. Gill nets don’t have that capability because of the limited factor of high mortality rate.

Commercial selective gear testing wouldn’t be needed if status quo was working.

The possibility of an added benefit of more ESA wild getting back to spawning beds by deleting gill nets is a bonus.

Am I mistaken? I seem to remember that you wanted more ESA listed on the spawning beds along with less strays?

Personally if I was in the power/ irrigation industry, I would be far more worried about smelt /sturgeon issues than how to catch missclips..Just look at what those little silver fish have done to the Sac Valley.

The idea that we will increase the selective capture rate of the commercial fleet, as a tool to keep producing the same amount of hatchery fish, and in the end increase the number of wild fish spawning naturally, is just plain to stupid to comprehend.
When simply releasing fewer hatchery fish in the first place will achieve the exact same results.

Simple math already answered your question what could happen.

Your wish is getting closer on hatchery fish reduction possibilities.

We'll just have to see how this thing plays out with the variety of approaches to wild to hatchery in alt 1 thru 5.

fishing stray hatchery fish out of specific systems to meet the hsrg recommendation is the goal, do you think they can do it ?, the only way i see them doing it is with some elaborate mathmatical formula that they will be able to get a buyoff from the fed`s with.

Whats odd is we have as much fish in the river now with fewer releases than 30 years ago, let them cut and keep improving dam passage.

You have been bringing up weirs lately. That would be one solution. You’ve probably noticed that there are a few in some of the ALT on the DEIS.

SBD just brought up dam outflow to help. No problem there.

Yeah but the CR used to be loaded with wild fish when they didn't clip the all the hatchery fish....

I've talked to plenty of old timers that used to catch "springer" steelhead, those early summer runs that used to show in late March through April, always made me wonder if those were just unclipped hatchery fish as they've dissapeared over the years......

Keith

i think its because of advancements in fish food at hatchery's and when they move fish to the net pens they are taking pre-smolts and raising them to smolts since the survival rate is about 10 times better.

Wild stock assessments are not done by counting fish with extra fins at the dam, they are done in the sub basins where the stock spawns.

Yeah I know, right along with the mis-clips......

Keith

When fished non-selectively, hatchery fish in mixed stock areas encourage overharvest. back in the 1970s, during early years of the Boldt decision, WDF was proud of the fact, and claimed so in print, that they solved the problem of not meeting Chinook escapement goals and having hatchery surpluses by lowering the goals. back then, they hit the lower target.

Look at coho in southern Puget Sound. A great and very successful hatchery program has cleaned out the wild fish.

It is possible, too, that the volume of hatchery fish released leads to some sort of over-capacity in the ocean. Note, though, that we are fishing down all sort of things out there, many of which probably served as salmon food. So, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We lower the producitvity of the ocean and get fewer fish back so we lower the number of fish we produce.

In the long run, if we want a lot of salmon or other apex predator fish, then we need to leave the food base alone.

Lower the productivity of the ocean?
Then why do stocks populations increase almost immediately when ocean conditions improve?
I'll agree with one thing you have said Carcassman, we have in deed lowered something, but it isn't the productivity of the ocean, but rather the carrying capacity of our rivers and streams.
But that seems to be a inconvenient truth for many.

The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) attributed the increase in global seafood production to aquaculture; 51.7 million metric tons of farmed seafood was produced in 2006, compared to 92 million metric tons of wild seafood.

Then you can add 10-30% for bycatch depending on what reports you look at. That would add 9-27million metric tonnes to the already 92 million metric tonnes.

A great deal of concern has been expressed by fishery managers and conservation/environmental groups that bycatch and discards may be contributing to biological overfishing and altering the structure of marine ecosystems.

The urgency of the current fisheries decline has begun to galvanize both governments and the private sector, at least in the developed world. Such nations as the United States, Canada, and the members of the European Union have recently adopted tougher fishing controls and have started to shrink the size of their fishing fleets.

An international group of ecologists and economists warned that the world will run out of seafood by 2048 if steep declines in marine species continue at current rates, based on a four-year study of catch data and the effects of fisheries collapses.

Ocean conditions is the biggest factor in determining stock population strength, however a river's carrying capacity is the determining factor as to whether or not they crash during poor ocean conditions.
With the fact that the majority of our threatened and ESA listed stocks are hovering just above the extinction level, perhaps we should consider raising the carrying capacity as a means toward recovery.
Denying what scientists have been saying for years hasn't recovered a single stock.

Reading over this gargantuan thread and not having much to add to the conversation I would like to pose a question to the contributers here.

It seems a large amount of stock is being thrown into good vs. poor ocean conditions. With the Pacific Ocean being the enormous body of water it is, many different species of salmonoids migrating to different parts of the Pacific, and many different aquatic species inhabiting the Pacific that affect the food chain. How is it that ocean conditions are absolutely determined to be good or bad in any given year? Who makes this determination? How reliable is the data? What kind of data is used?

Seems to be an important part of the equation here. Just wondering how such an enormous assessment is made year to year?

Thank you for all who have contributed. Lots of info to soak up for someone with an interest in this topic.

Good ocean conditions are the years there's poor ocean harvest of salmonids.

Bad ocean conditions are the years they slaughter them out there and we get crappy returns....

It goes hand in hand and is an easy cop-out for poor conditions.

Perhaps it's ironic that since harvests are down off our coasts in Big Ol' Blue that we get banner spring chinook and Fall King returns?

Keith

Actually along the lines of what I was thinking Keith.

Where would one find the data to back up such a claim?

I'd like to see the ocean commercial catch data on the harvest of steelhead, coho, sea run cutthroat, lamprey ells, and spring chinook.