When was the hatchery program begun?

How old were the fish when released?


Were they specific to certain areas of Puget Sound?


Is the program still around, were reductions (which I did hear about) due to budget numbers or HSRG recommendations?


Were they in danger of chum seine net fishery as bycatch?

Here is what I remember. NOTE: I know it's not 100% correct.

-70's?
-Think over a year old. Delayed release to keep them inside PS.
-Specific to areas where net pens were located.
-Think it's still around, but was significantly reduced when Tribes wanted and got 50%.
-Byecatch...Always.

Here is the statute that the Puget Sound Recreational Fisheries Enhancement Oversight Committee operates under. The blackmouth program is covered by this part of the statutes.

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=77.105

I found this years ago.

BM History

Cool Read! Thanks for sharing! I fished for these out of Narrows Marina in the early 80's at it's peak. Unbelieveable fishing it was. We exclusively drift mooched for them, and at times so many were around they would slack line you while letting out to get down. The faster and deeper you could get down, the bigger the fish you would catch. Averaged 6-10# but some were in the upper teens to 20. Aah the memories.

South Sound is a dead zone, fish released there or naturally produced there dont come back in sustainable numbers for whatever reason. Steelhead, coho, chinook in particular.

Except for pinks and chums, which defy that rule. Why? I dunno, but it must be an important clue,

fb

Pinks and Chum leave the river and sound fairly quick. That might have something to do with it.

Maybe one of the bio's on here will have a better clue.

RUNnGUN... I'm with you 100%.. Ah, the memories.

Back in the early '80's, there were all kinds of great fisheries going on. Ocean, Puget Sound, South Sound, Staight of Juan de Fuca, not to mention almost every river in the state but especially the anadromous streams here in SW Washington.

All of this mainlyy due to one old Norwegion guy named Harry Senn. He was just an old pond scrubber who rose to the position of Chief of Hatcheries for the now defunct Dept. of Fisheries for WA State. What he did for the hatchery programs is now just a legend. I'm somewhat blessed to have become a close friend of his.

Back then in the early '80's. there would be 30, if not 40 trucks and boat trailers parked at the I-5 boat launch on the Cowlitz every day fishing for spring chinook.

Back then, you could not get a place to stay at Seiku in Sept. unless you paid some sort of bribe to the resort owner.

Fast forward 30 years... It is now what it is.

Thanx Harry... You have not been forgotton.

Except that South Sound cutthroat, which stay around all year, do well. The native char, which also spend lots of time in the sound, are doing well.

The most logical thought I have heard is that the successive waves of juveniles, starting with pinks and chums, are essentially cleaning out the food base.

The more northern stocks of steelhead, coho, Chinook seem to be surviving better. As one moves south, survivals drop. Since they all smolt at more or less the same time, the ones further south pass through areas also grazed.

Perhaps the base of the food pyramid is collapsing.

I'd bet you're on the right track. It's my belief the eel grass wiped out during the commercial dragging has a lot to do with it.

The eel grass is actually coming back very nicely in the south Sound.

Nisqually hit about 40,000 kings last Fall. Dechutes, don't remember the number but impressive. Not to bad on the Carbon either. Problem is they come back in a two week period blasting through area 11 and 13 not giving us much time to whack um.

Blackmouth fishing was still good in the late 90's but once the planting of fish stopped....

You need to plant them for them to come! Trying to save natural spawners seems stupid to me when we can make more..Ask Tacoma Power..it's OK to do!

TRUE wild fish in the south Sound are GONE!

Lets see the numbers of fish planted both Chinook and Coho for the south sound from the 70's to present and see what we have. I'll start diggin to see what I can find.

I remember the fishing back in the 70's and 80's.
When I graduated from college, I took a night job so I could fish during the day.
I'd get off work at 5 in the morning, head to PT D and launch the boat. The mooching was crazy good. I have some great memories of fishing with my dad during the blackmouth haydays. The silver fishing was great as well but sucks now compared to what it was.

Say what?

I used to be a fanatic winter Blackmouth guy since 1980. But I havent fished for them for the last 3-4 winters, no fish mostly. Mostly fished in Saratoga Passage... Hat island, Racetrack, Elger Bay, Baby island etc.

But I didnt realize that the "planting of fish stopped".

I thought the Blackmouth program survived but at a lower level.

Alot lower!

I remember fishing all night long and listening to the salmon splash in the distance by what seemed like thousands. Catching True Cod that were as long as my leg FROM SHORE!...Hake would be such a pain in the [Bleeeeep!].. Schools of Pile Perch that would turn the water black when they went by..Schools of Sea run Cutts stacked like Cord wood. I didn't start fishing area 11 until 1978...... What a shame..Would have never thought at the age of 12 that after casting from shore and catching Coho after Coho the area would be like it is now..piss poor management.

I would not mind turning the south Sound into a mega hatchery salmon zone; one that is well thought out. Can't believe I just said that, it must be salt water season. Right now I don't think the money is well spent,

fb

From what I hear the South Sound has now pretty devoid of kelp which is supposed to be something the herring spawn on. No baitfish, no attraction for hungry salmon to stay there.

WDFW has a Puget Sound recreational fisheries enhancement program that directly directs and looks at the releases that support the "blackmouth" program.

There is a citzen committee that oversees that program - sounds like a prefect match for some of you. Your chance to get involved as set the State right or maybe just learn a bit about what limits some of these programs.

If interested contact Steve Thiesfeld at WDFW headquarter.

Tight lines
Curt

Sounds like several of you would be interested in joining the committee that oversees

Right now, throwing more money at producing yearling fish in southern Puget Sound, is not going to do anything. When these fisheries that everybody talks about were successful, the contribution to harvest from release of chinook yearlings in Puget Sound was ~1.5%. The latest CWT information that I have seen shows the current contribution rate at less than 10% of that, or ~0.11%. Some of the hatchery programs that were closed by WDFW because of poor survival (e.g. Chambers Cr., Samish, Whatcom Cr.) had survivals even lower than that - something like ~ 0.05%.

At these current rates, having fisheries as good as the 70's would take releasing > 30 million fall Chinook yearlings now rather than 3 million then (unless of course that 30M yearlings completely overwhelmed the existing food supply, which doesn't appear to be able to support the current production). Good luck trying to find hatcheries that could produce 6 million more pounds of fish (30M yearlings @ 5 fpp).Even the legend, Harry Senn (a friend of mine as well) couldn't come up with the pond space or get the same results under the current conditions.

As for the good survival from Nisqually and Deschutes Chinook - those are from fingerling releases not yearlings. Current marine survival of yearlings across both Chinook and coho in South Sound are in the crapper (you can throw in steelhead as well). They have been since the late 80's - early 90's. IMO, mismanagement as others have called this situation would be continuing to try to produce 3 million fish that don't survive.

Another thing to note is that when contribution was very high in the late 70's and early 80's, the size limit was lower than it currently is. My recollection is that to address the catch imbalance that someone referred to above, size limits were increased twice from an 18" minimum to a 20" minimum, and finally to a 22" minimum (For the record, this is the recollection of another old guy and might not be exactly correct, but I KNOW it was increased at least once). Hal, Curt, Steve - do you guys remember? Also, for the record, that catch imbalance did not lead to smaller yearling programs, but increases in fall Chinook fingerling releases in some places in South Sound (the region of origin for the imbalance) and these increased size limits to reduce the sport harvest.

A couple more quick examples. Under current conditions, the Nisqually Tribe can barely sustain their coho (yearling release) program even though fall Chinook fingerlings survive very well. The Squaxin Island net-pen program is currently getting back a few thousand fish compared to returns to their terminal area of 70,000 - over 100,000 fish during periods of good survival. To show how bad the current survival is from these net pen releases, they are releasing somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 pounds of juvenile fish and returning something less than 20,000 pounds of adult fish ~ 10% of the biomass that they release. REVERSE OCEAN RANCHING AT IT'S FINEST!

That is not the way it is supposed to work.

Actually, back in '75 I believe there was no minimum size for Chinook in the sound. It was raised sequentially since then to deal with catch imbalances and probably to deal with sorting; who wants to keep a 12" Chinook?

Last data I saw on Chinook survival in SSound was that the yearling Chinook survived as "well" as the fingerlings. Like Oncy says, putting more yearlings out in deep SS is throwing good money after bad.

There is something seriously wrong with how fish are surviving there. I have not heard of too much effort being made to find out.