Well, it's obvious now that region 6 used more of their fuzzy math to tweak the model to create more paper kings so the gillnetters could access a bumper crop of coho that are obvious no shows. Quarter million my ass. Wonder if they will use in season management to restrict gill net days? Or fire Ron Warren?

OK my bad... but not entirely. I inadvertently referenced the original gillnet schedule that was published PRIOR to the "new and improved" NT schedule that was approved by emergency rule (CR103) by PA last month.... the one with 8 days on the Chehalis (2A/2D) and 4 days on the Hump (2C) that trumped the original 7 days of tangle nets on the Chehalis. Must have had a mental block from being so disgusted with it....

http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/forum...html#Post856617

My apologies for any perceived denigrating remarks about the QIN.

Regardless, I still want my week back in the bay.... squandered opportunity, never to be regained.

GDITMMM!!!!

Where I fish......water still colored, Chehalis at Porter guage shows the Chehalis is down 7 feet from 10/04 but still lot's of flow. Boat traffic is way down for this time of the year.......did see more boats yesterday than Sunday - Wednesday.

Thinking most people are either home, on the Satsop, on the Humptulips, or have gone North to do a walk-in in the Queets area.

Up and down the river bright Coho were caught today. Fish are moving but not huge numbers. If you find them or your spot / method lets them find you odds are getting one are a bit better until Monday as the nets go in Sunday.

went by the keys road boat ramp this morning, was really foggy. There were a lot of boats I'd say half of them guide boats and made the decision to not launch their due to the pressure.
Went down to friends to hunt the sloughs.

Well the Satsop is now skinny water. The CR looks colored up but is low as well. Took a brief look after work. Decided to go home and fire up the wood stove.

This season looks to be in deep trouble. The WDFW has posted catch data that looks like the disaster some of the posters have noted here.

The non tribal catch for Oct 6-12 was 820 Coho or 24% of the modeled catch of 3,457 fish. This was the first ever day of tangle net use so it could just be a gear test failure.

Tribal data is posted for week 40, the week prior to the above data. In 2C they caught 604 Coho or 23% of the modeled 2,664 fish. In 2A/2D they caught 820 Coho or 24% of the modeled 3,457 fish. This was the first week after the storm which probably reduced the catch.

Sports harvest so far based on creel checks at 28th St., Cosmopolis, and Montesano have been at 20-30% of the fish/angler rate of last year and with a larger run forecast should have been higher than last year.

Does anyone see a trend developing? If you run the model backward to predict run size the Coho run would be about 24% of the forcasted 211,419 total Chehalis Coho.

The Chinook harvest is in about the same condition indicating that the run size is less than the escapement goal again.

We can hope the early season conditions were abnormal or that the run is just late but right now this looks like one of the least accurate run size forecasts ever. If the next weeks data is the same as what has been posted so far one would have to be thinking that the rest of the season should be shut down for everyone at least if conservation and escapement goals were important.

This past weekend put a glimmer of hope in my abysmal bay/mainstem Chehalis season.... finally found some biters.

But as SoftBite said, my own experience on the water tells me the coho forecast is WAY off. The more than 1/4 million projected for the entire basin should have made rods bend virtually NON-stop through the trolling day all week...well at least enough to keep almost any chinook from latching onto the gear. That is certainly NOT the case. That bumper crop of coho is a resounding NO SHOW!

Compared to that last banner coho year of 2009.... total bites per day WAY down, proportion of coho WAY down. Really makes a guy yearn for days gone by.

http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/forum...html#Post556076

Well, most indications are that the reality will prove much less abundance than the forecast, but a friend took my daughter and I out yesterday, and we found a little action, despite the doom and gloom reports I'm hearing from most of the basin.

Early on, Dad found a smallish hen resting in an inside bend that looked fishy. I tried to hand the rod off to Autumn, but her hands were "too cold." She was easily convinced to pose with the prize, however.


Later on, we anchored up at the bottom of a riffle and fished the "happy" water where it gradually settled into a deep flat. Bob hit a nice, fat hen, and Autumn hooked up with this handsome jack:


We lost a couple more nice fish along the way. All told, it was a fun day with fall in full glory.

I sure hope the numbers improve in a hurry so we can do some more of this before winter takes hold.

A little envious of your fishing partner this year FF (BTW she sure is growing up!)

LMWS has yet to bring a GH salmon to hand all season.

Of course she might have to actually go fishing for that to happen.

Time for me to bring down the Parker Kids. Lord help the crew (and Dad's) of the boat with Alex, Avery and the CanyonMan twins!

I feel your pain, eyeFISH. She's the only one of mine who likes to fish, and I'm trying hard to keep her interested. There's still time for good things to happen this year. I can't imagine someone with as much fish mojo as LMWS missing an entire season.

Look us up if LMWS is in town and some like-minded company might convince her to wet a line.

The co-managers have historically resisted in-season mgt here. Maybe it's time to try.

If the run forecast really is this far off and the net schedule (brutal) remains as is, it sure does speak volumes to the true intentions of those making the call.

Awesome stuff FF02. So cool that you got your daughter to float that with you.

Had larryb out there this morning. Lots of contact made, not quite as much contact with a bat to a fish's head as I would have liked. I lost my current favorite spinner, and castingpearls lost his pliers on the same fish,,,, that we did not land.

It has been a really weird year for sure regarding the Chehalis. Lets hope that this week things change. In my neck of the woods I would say we are shy of normal for right now, but September in the river was pretty darn good.

Today the WDFW web site was updated for sport catch. The Coho run is still pretty much the same dismal story as reported in my earlier post.

The tribal data for week 40 was increased marginally since this morning. It also tells the same story.

Captain Obvious says what I've seen and heard, the run number's for coho appears to be waaaay over estimated. The DFW might get lucky and meet Chinook escapement, if the nets don't eat them up fishing for all those coho.

Can't complain too much though, have been hooking fish, I'm just not catching as much I would like with a 280k run size estimate.

Tuesday 10/15/2013...

7:00 a.m.------11:30......mile below Twidwells, 2 boats, 4 fishermen....3 bites.....1 fish in the boat, not my boat. Fog, East wind, and it was cold.....before we left the river, I ran to see how many were "on the line, at Twidwell's"............zero, 0, not a boat, 1st time at this period of October that I can ever remember no boats.

DWFW, in my opinion, way over estimated Coho returns.....to give the NT netters fishing time. The model sucks!!!!!! Because WDFW won't backoff the NT days.....means sport fishing in the Chehalis and all the trib's will suck.

Thanks for sharing your 2009 thread doc. Pretty cool to see past pictures, especially of banki when he was chunky and had hair.

The link is to WDF&W website for commercial. http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/commercial/salmon/landings.html Now as I am NEVER shy about kicking the cra- out District 17 staff I must put this out also. When you get to the website scroll to GH Non Indian and look for the Weekly Observer Summary and hit the WK 41 link ( it is a link ) and it is the encounter ratio Onboard Observer report for Chinook, Coho & Chum. Now I can tell you they did not do this without prodding. That said it was requested and without any fanfare Mr. Warren, Kirt Hughes and staff got it done.

So on this issue I sincerely thank R-6 D-17 staff for the change and effort.

why so many shad?