I agree----well said!!!!

This year "the stars aligned for many sports fishermen". Early rain, no netting scheduled...fish moved up....then a period of no rain, dropping rivers, scheduled netting didn't do well as expected....my observation was tribal and nt effort pretty much quit. November and December, some rain but rivers dropped fast.....I can't remember where I could sit in 4-5' of water, look over the edge of the boat AND SEE THE RIVER BOTTOM, until around December 20.....strange year!!!!!

I've not fished steelhead, but do the "drive around lookie lou", some fish when when fishable but TOO MUCH RAIN is keeping rivers so high "even plunkers aren't fishing"...and its 1/2 way thru steelhead season, still the rains fall!!!!!!

Same here, crushed em all late season without a soul in sight.
And all I heard from others was there were no fish around. Lol.

DW fishes almost everyday he can and when you do that you get a real feel for the river. Several of us communicated back and forth through this year DW & I could get a fairly good view of things and that with some other comments prior is what happened. We all know when it rains early it really messes up the run timing. The new wrinkle for us was it rained early and then the river did not brown out in first part November. I had not seen that weather / river combination before and frankly it was about just figuring out what was what. The fish had a real pattern they followed with the tide and numbers. It came right down to timing on the tide and getting the different travel patterns in the river figured out.

There were days I would find them and 4 miles upstream they would shotgun right up past DW not a bite, then days vice a versa. It was a strange year.

Meeting Date Location/Time
Here are the dates for NOF Grays Harbor. Already several have asked why only one Adviser meeting? No idea but I assume that is all the agency feels are necessary.

GH & WB Forecasting 2/27/2020 Montesano City Hall, 112 N. Main St., Montesano - 6 pm to 8 pm



GH NOF Public Mtg. 3/24/2020 Montesano City Hall, 112 N. Main St., Montesano - 6 pm to 8 pm



GH Advisory 4/2/2020 Montesano City Hall, 112 N. Main St., Montesano - 6 pm to 8 pm

Drifter said "I've not fished steelhead, but do the "drive around lookie lou", some fish when when fishable but TOO MUCH RAIN is keeping rivers so high "even plunkers aren't fishing"...and its 1/2 way thru steelhead season, still the rains fall!!!!!!

I'm getting a little concerned when things finally drop in, the hatchery runs will be about over and down streaming. I guess we can only hope the run was a little late. Sucks to catch beauties all spawned out unless some early wilds are around.

Thursday, February 6, 2020 the Agency staff will present the annual review of the Grays Harbor Policy to the Commission. Scroll down a bit to get past boilerplate policy verbiage to this years info in the summary.

Lots of info in the presentation on the 2019 run sizes and it appears we made escapement do to the fact that mother nature brought rain early. Had not that happened and commercial tribal & NT harvest was normal we would have failed to make escapement for all three species.



7. Grays Harbor Salmon Management Policy – Briefing, Public Comment

Staff will provide the Commission an annual review briefing on Grays Harbor salmon management as stipulated within Policy C-3621, providing guidance for Grays Harbor salmon fisheries.



Summary:
https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/...g_printable.pdf

Presentation:
https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/...wdraft12820.pdf

In another conversation I asked the question just who, where, and when is in charge or in simple term the chain of command. Kirt Hughes provided this breakout. I thought this might help folks to understand who, what, and where in the decision making process.

Starting at the top:

Larry Phillips as he indicates is the Region 6 Director and reports to Director Susewind

Ron Warren is now the Director of Fish Policy and also reports to Director Susewind

Kelly Cunningham is now the Fish Program Director (replacing Ron)

Craig Burley has replaced Cunningham as the FP Deputy Director

I have replaced Craig as the Fish Management Division Manager (responsibilities largely for management of Inland Fish, Marine Fish and Shellfish related activities)

Kyle Adicks is still the Intergovernmental Salmon Manager, reports to Kelly Cunningham and is responsible for salmon and steelhead fishery management and related co-management engagement at the statewide level.

My vacant position, the Statewide salmon and Steelhead fishery manager reports to Kyle. As the title suggests, Statewide Salmon and Steelhead, statewide management authority for these species and ensures consistent implementation of Fish and Wildlife Commission policies.

Chad Herring reports to that position and has responsibility for implementation of Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay FWC policies.



Regional Fish Program Manager, James Losee, reports to Craig Burley, for all of region 6 has management responsibility for coastal shellfish, inland fish, salmon, and steelhead management as well as hatcheries. This includes the District and Area Biologists and Hatchery Operations Managers.

For the area from Queets River in the north to Grays Harbor the District Biologist is Mike Scharpf. He is the management biologist responsible for inland fish, salmon, and steelhead management.

Rivrguy -
Let's see if I have this right-

Step 1 -The input from the district biologist (the person closest to the resource in this communication chain) communicates to the regional biologist.

Step 2 -the regional biologist communicates with the fish program deputy director.

Step 3 - the FP deputy director communicates with the FP director.

Step 4- FP director communicates with the Director of Fish Policy

Step 5 Director of fish Policy communicates with the Director.

In addition it looks like that there is a potential for the several different other communication pathways depending on the issues. For example for a policy issue several additional steps might be required with communication to the position implementing local Polices communicating to the State wide policy position who in turn communicating with the intergovernmental salmon manager who re-inserts into communication chain at the FP director. In addition the regional manager may also be involved.

In other words there are at least 5 to 8 rungs in the communication ladder (or more if there are side loops in that ladder) between those with hands on resource information to the final decision maker. In short it looks like there are lots of opportunities for miss understandings with the implied management failures.

Curt

What could possibly go wrong with a system like that?

Did not realize I missed the first part of the e mail from Larry Phillips which is below.


James Losee is the technical and policy lead for WDFW regarding all fish issues. He also supervises all R6 Fish Program staff with Chad being the exception. Chad is a direct report to Kirt Hughes and is responsible for Willapa and GH policy implementation. I am a direct report to Dir Susewind and represent him in the region. I also lead the Regional Management Team (RMT). This group consists of the four Regional Program Managers (Fish, Habitat, Wildlife and Enforcement) and other senior staff. This group is the decision making authority in the Region. I also represent Region 6 on the statewide Executive Management Team (EMT). This group includes 16 members including the Dir, Deputy Dir, Program Dir’s, Regional Dir’s, and other Dir’s Office staff.

I'm glad you posted that Rivrguy. I've been thinking how handy it would be to have an organization chart for WDFW. So many people I've known have retired, and so many of those I've met have promoted to new positions. It's become one of those situations where I can't recognize the players without a scorecard.

To All:

There should be a Organization Chart, posted on the WDFW Web Page, would probably be a full time job just to keep it "up to date".

A big concern to me, created new positions/new titles.....must be a "full time group" to come up with new title names.

A agency that says "WDFW is dedicated to transparency and sustainability" makes me wonder? I used to be able to move around and find what I wanted, now with the change....tough for me to find historical data.....change is not always good!!!!

An org chart would also provide a visual representation of how many layers of management exist near the top, which I gather from Rivrguy's post is too many. Multiple layers of bureaucracy only slow or otherwise hamper progress. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn there are a lot of people, some in important roles, that aren't getting information they need to do their jobs, simply because the communication layers are too numerous and disorganized.

I never got very high in the Food Chain but for the most productive parts of my career if I wanted to talk to the Director or the Head of Program I could. If I had a question or information that they needed to know/answer you just went and took care of it; not pass it through 25 sets of kidneys.

You mean like this?

https://wdfw.wa.gov/about/administration/leadership

and this....

https://wdfw.wa.gov/about/commission/members

Seems to cover senior staff leadership roles and the Commissioners at the WDFW. I've seen way worse administrative pages.....this one isn't all that bad.

https://wdfw.wa.gov/about/administration

Granted, this says nothing to the accuracy or relevancy of the information on the site.....

Want to find out what Staff has briefed to the Commission? Up until the new (and certainly not improved) web site one could work back through meeting records to mid-1995 - that included the actual presentation materials. Now those individual meeting records are available only back through 2017 - a loss of around 22 years of very pertinent information.

I keep hearing that "they" intend to bring those records into the new web site. Maybe good intentions but I have yet to see an actual timeline for that to occur. It is almost impossible to not be cynical....

Meanwhile the doughnuts in the break-room disappear daily.

No, not like those. An org chart, like an inverted tree, illustrating the various administrative and staff positions and how they relate to one another.

Actually it resembles a process that leaves nobody accountable. A retired staffer once told me why they have committees / groups is so no single individual is accountable. It was an agency decision. Sound familiar ?

Chad Herring no longer reports to Kirt Hughes. Kirt is the new Fish Management Division manager (replacing Craig Burley).