You see the thing that is idiotic, is we make chinook THE recreational priority, then switch prodution around that the only place we can access them effectively is on the nemah river (even there it is pay to play).

Its just dumb. the rec's were sold a bill of goods.

All of this to try and protect wild chinook when they are genetically indistinguishable from the hatchery stocks.

The problem with WB is that we're focused on very marginal chinook habitat and tyring to do recovery there. We should be focused on real chinook streams like the chehalis.

WDFW spins its wheels worrying about mid hood canal or the stilly when it comes to chinook. What about the real chinook rivers (skagit, snohomish, chehalis, columbia, the snake.

I think we should focus our limited efforts and resources on rivers with the hyrdology and potential habitat to maybe support chinook through the coming climate changes were facing. Instead we focus on streams that maybe supported small distinct wild stocks pre settlement, but with modern habitat issues they clearly cannot make a go of it. Throw in a little local warming and its a recipe for failure.

Well I think one has to pick the point in time you want to base your plan on. Thing is in the past prior to the changes made by man the Chehalis was a moderate Chinook stream with East Fork of the Satsop being a real producer. This time frame would be prior to Bingham Hatchery when the hatchery was at Schafer Park. The Chehalis was and is a Coho producing SOB but outside the Satsop in the past Chinook prospered in the Hump which performs just the opposite of the Chehalis.

Thing is you cannot return to the past but only try to manage in a manner that allows fish to proper in some manner that may or may not look like the past. Willapa was managed as a kill zone fishery for years. Add to that stocks were moved all over the place resulting in the genetics that exist now. The Willapa policy is a harsh and severe solution to years of abuse and mismanagement and never was intended to make one feel warm and fuzzy all over. It was the method chosen by WDF&W to address the previous bad behavior which by design will have a lot of pain for all harvesters. This was a fact from the get go.

At one time, Chinook were primarily a Big River fish. Adults were 40, 50, 100 pounds because that is what it took to spawn in the big rivers. The smaller streams had a few, probably, but if there wasn't sufficient flow in August/September to get them upstream, they weren't there.


We have fished the stocks down to younger and smaller sizes. A 20 pounder can now rather easily spawn in the small streams like the WB tribs. We have created the small stream Chinook. As I have said before, we are turning the Chinook into a piscivorous chum; now ever creek can have them.

The primary historic Chinook streams were big (Sacramento, San Juoquin, Columbia, Skagit, Fraser, Yukon, etc. ) Cold in summer (snow melt/glaciers) with strong flows. That's where real Chinook lived. The smallest streams had outlier populations and I suspect that streams draining low mountains that were primarily rain driven were not great streams for Chinook.

We now want to change that because we have better uses for the big rivers than fish production.

Carcassman, Agree, big river chinook are not the priority. My arguement is if we care about the species, they should be rather than ESA listed fish on dinky streams. The reason chinook will fair poorly in creeks is that most don't have the in river habitat to support many fry. Gotta do some growin before the estuary will work.


Dave I agree, that some action needed to be taken, but the path chosen was lose-lose-lose (for conservation, commercial, recs). Staying with Naselle could have been win, lose, win. It was a dumb switch.

Francis, I am not accustomed to being skunked on WB. I think its happened to my boat 6 times in the past decade. More than half of them have been at the hands of the south bay. Thus my pesimism.

Granted an n of 4 is not huge, but given success rates in other areas is a bit daunting.

Even a "small" stream has plenty of habitat for the Chinook fry. They would compete with coho and steelhead fry, but since they emerge sooner would be at a size advantage. But, like coho, their primary habitat of choice would be lower river/valley floor which is reserved for human use.

This was forwarded by Kim & Barbara from Region 6. This is different.

Hi Folks,

As you all are aware the first advisory group meetings for Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay pre-season planning are slated for the week of March 19th. I would like to make you aware of changes in the WDFW organizational structure as it relates to policy implementation and management of fisheries in the coastal marine estuaries of southwest Washington. In an effort to streamline the management structure and mitigate additional duties that policy implementation has created for regional staff we intend to align policy implementation responsibilities with that of Puget Sound and the Columbia River. For these areas the policy implementation and management oversight originates more directly through the Intergovernmental Salmon Management Unit out of our headquarters office in Olympia.

To that end, the Department has created a South Coast Fishery Policy lead. Primary duties of the position will be the implementation of our Commission policies for Willapa Bay (C-3622) and Grays Harbor
Salmon Management (C-3621) as well as other applicable policies. The position will have responsibilities for the pre-season planning process associated with North of Falcon (NOF) as well as in-season management and will report directly to the Statewide Salmon and Steelhead Fishery Manager – Kirt Hughes. All regional staff will continue their work in District 17 (the watersheds of Willapa Bay and Gray Harbor) and continue to report to the Region 6 Regional Fish Program Manager, Annette Hoffmann.

I am pleased to announce that Chad Herring has agreed to fill this position on an acting basis in order to complete the NOF process. Chad has been working in Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor fisheries management since 2012, most recently as the Willapa Bay Policy Implementation Biologist since 2015.

Schedule change NOF Willapa.

Hi Everyone,

As you may be aware, we have a Willapa Bay advisory meeting which is associated with the North of Falcon salmon setting process that is scheduled for April 12 (Thursday) at the Region 6 Montesano office from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Due to some scheduling conflicts, we need to move that meeting a week earlier to April 5 (Thursday), same time and place as above.

Sorry for any inconvenience. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thanks.

Barbara

Final GH meeting was also switched from April 17 to a couple weeks earlier on Apr 4.

Interesting that they do this when BOTH the GH and WB final meetings were intended to review seasons AFTER the final PFMC shebang April 6-11.. The idea was to help staff review the pending changes to the reg book before the printer deadline.

This way, they can change your input at PFMC. And they do such a good job on getting the pamphlets and announcements out in clear as a bell English so what's the worry?

Had some questions on GH & Willapa NOF and what things look like. As to what seasons look like , limited is the answer. The Adviser meeting for GH was just give me ideas BS, ass deep to be honest. Why? No harvest model so it was kinda throwing something at the wall and seeing if it sticks. It was a waste of everyone's time and frankly just going through the motions.

Willapa? I passed (out more accurate as a dear friend drank me under the table, again ) so I can not be truly accurate. That said it seems the the English language is being redefined by WDF&W as to the meaning of words. This issue is about the Commission guidance that put Chinook impacts at 11% Rec / 9% commercial. Seems that this can be determined to be North bay even though that was not in the one page Commission directive.

Maybe someone present can describe the meeting a bit more. My perspective is pretty much same o same o nuthin new. Same game just different look.

It sounds like the first GH Advisors meeting went about as expected. You got the news that things aren't all that great regarding forecasts and opportunity. Then a brainstorming session to talk about it. Isn't this sort of standard for a first meeting? Ideas during the brainstorming would feed several options for development in the model. It probably takes a little time to flesh out these options in the model. These could be discussed at the followup meetings. Would you rather have "this is the way its gonna be" for the first meeting?

Brainstorming my ass. ( not meant to offend ya ) We had preseason forecast and with numbers tight you cannot propose a season with sincerity that reflects reality without the harvest model. You can get commercial inputs ( when you have the model ) but Rec requires staff to do the inputs. It was 100% dog and pony show driven by the need to meet the APA process legal requirements so they cannot be sued. ( again ) All that was done in the GH meeting was show last years seasons with this years returns to show the difference between the two years.

Three monkeys doing something to a football could have multi tasked and done the same thing. That staff have a bitch of a job this year ( well always ) is a given. Was staff dishonest? Not no but hell no. Was staff just going through the motions for Olympia? Not yes but hell yes. The meeting was a classic D & P show.

Couple of meetings got added and in the e mail notification I lost track of one so I asked. Below are the remaining dates.

You are correct, at the public meeting we discussed that we will have an additional meeting for Willapa Bay. The purpose of this meeting as well as the meeting for Grays Harbor on April 17th, will be the pamphlet language walk through. For Willapa Bay, this meeting is scheduled for April 12th at the Region 6 office at 6pm. It is not a change just a confirmation that we will have the meeting that I discussed in my March 14th e-mail to the distribution list.

Here is another change for GH NOF. For my part no I do not know whats up other than they violated several promises made back a bit by Ron Warren on process and headed behind the door. As numbers are short, ocean folks are trying to gobble and if your local you should pay attention. the QIN get 50% of harvestable ENTERING WA ST waters. So if the ocean is not restrained it will eat into the non treaty ( ours ) share and can will be back filled by terminal fisheries. If your a Chehalis Basin resident inland you might want to pay attention as it appears a hold up is in progress out of sight.


To All Interested Parties:


FYI – There will be a public meeting to review the 2018 Salmon Sport Fishing proposals for Grays Harbor on Tuesday April 17, 2018 at the Montesano City Hall from 6 pm to 8 pm. This meeting was originally scheduled to take place at the Region 6 Office in Montesano, but was changed to the Montesano City Hall to accommodate more people.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Kim Figlar-Barnes
Fish Biologist
WDFW Fish Program – Region 6
48 Devonshire Rd
Montesano WA, 98563

360-249-4628 ex 235

Need to look very carefully at how the sharing is worded. It was my understanding that the 50:50 applies to all fish landed in WA, caught in the waters of WA and the ocean outside 3 miles. Not BC, not AK, not OR but all the rest.

I think, based on what I have seen in the Reel News a year or so ago, the State now divides the catch 50% "outside" and 50% Tribal inside. That means that QIN would get 50% of the harvestable from the Quinult and Chehalis. It would not include, as Indian fish, anything taken in the ocean trolling. Anybody remember Makah??? Tribal trolling, tribal by catch in Fraser fisheries are all supposed to count against the Tribal share.

Had some questions asked on the 50%. Tribal troll and such count against them as they add and subtract. Thing is most do not know that last year for the first time the QIN insisted on their full 50%. I imagine they will do the same this year with things being tight. It makes the marine & fresh water sharing numbers break different as to the harvestable fish available. Simply put the NT marine harvest can impact the fresh water sharing and increase the QIN portion of fish crossing the bar into GH. It is a zero sum thing .

I know it is quibbling but QIN doesn't always get 50%. Treaty Indians get 50%. If there is no marine take by Tribes then they do get 50%. It's exactly like the NI shares on salmon and steelhead. Since NI don't take steelhead (we'll ignore the beach/Whidbey fisheries right now) each stream is shared 50:50. One for you, one for me.

In salmon, the NI side (especially) has already taken a big chunk in marine waters. Ultimately, this is why the in-river recs get cut off so often. Their (the NI) have taken the share ahead of them.

In Boldt, in Court, the sharing is Treaty/non-Treaty. If, somehow, the ocean troll by tribes harvested every last Quinault Chinook the QIN would have no allocation left under Boldt.

The above is what the Courts' have said. They also let the State and Tribes negotiate something different for whatever reasons they collectively have. Which is why transparency is critical.

This is also why many Puget Sound tribes are not particularly stoked at the effectiveness of the Makah troll fishery...they are lowholing the other tribes.

Fish on...

Todd

That's true, Todd. Which may be why there is an effort to make folks think that Tribe fishing in bays and rivers gets 50%.

Non-tribal folks have always had a strangely difficult time understanding that by the time a particular run gets to a river that the non-tribal share may have already been completely harvested by marine fishers over the past year.

Fish on...

Todd