Slab
Guess I'm missing your question, Brushbears numbers appear to be all Washington releases so with out Canadian and Alaskan catch numbers hard to tell what was being intercepted at that time. Washington did a buyout on nontribal commercial permits, PS, Coastal and Columbia river, reducing there numbers by something like 80% in the eighty's I believe. Which was reallocated to tribal fisheries, Oregon and California haven't. Alaska has been moving there season's to more inside area's were there not impacting lower 48 stocks as much, but they kinda got overrun by out of work lower 48 trollers who snapped up there loose permits. Trying to find an article I read by a POed Alaskan manager.

SBD....I was just trying to figure out why, with the huge increase in hatchery plants around 76, there were so many commercials that folded.
Did the Canadians get them all, the Tribes, or ?
My personal steelheading experience was that two years after Boldt, the steelheading fell on it's face. I remember writing a disgusted note on my punch card when I turned it in. that would have been 76.

It's hard to believe that with a 4+ fold increase in plants that the numbers I saw were so dramatically reduced. It could be that I only recall the decline in steelhead and not salmon....I'm not sure now.

Shooting from the hip, I would guess Canadian troll fisherys. Might have traded it for some PS sockeye, don't know. But I'm sure Washington Oregon troll started the slow desent in the early eighties.

The numbers posted are total salmon releases for the years given by WDF

BUSH BEAR
The following drainages were stocked one or more times:

Grays Harbor
Duck Lake 1972 4,980 Masu (Cherry salmon)
Campbell Slough
Humptulips River
Damon Creek
Big Creek
Stevens Creek
Donkey Creek
O'Brien Creek
Chenois Creek
Hoquiam River
E F Hoquiam River
M F Hoquiam River
Chehalis River
Wishkah River
Wynoochee River
Aberdeen Lake
Unknown
Satsop River
W F Satsop River
Canyon River
E F Satsop River
M F Satsop River
Satsop Springs
Bingham Creek
Phillips Creek
Cloquallum Creek
Wildcat Creek
Delezenne Creek (sp?)
Johns River
Andrews Creek
Porter Creek
Rock Creek
Black River
Waddell Creek
Skookumchuck River
Newaukum River
N F Newaukum River
S F Newaukum River
S F Chehalis River
Stillman Creek
Elk Creek
Seven Creek
Eight Creek
Swem Creek
Stowe Creek
Smith Creek
Thrash Creek
W F Chehalis River
E F Chehalis River
Sherman Creek
North River
Smith Creek
Clearwater Creek
Elkhorn Creek
Davis Creek
Little North River
Fall River
Willapa River
Johnson Slough
S F Willapa River
Rue Creek
Wilson Creek
Mill Creek
Stringer Creek
Trap Creek
Falls Creek
Fork Creeks
Half Moon Creek
Fern Creek
Niawtakum
Palix River
M Palix River
Canyon Creek
N Nemah River
Williams Creek
Cruiser Creek
S Nemah River
Mid Nemah River
Naselle River
S F Naselle River
Beam Creek
O'Connor Creek
Salmon Creek
N F Nasellle River
Alder Creek
Bear River

Total releases, across the state, in the same time frame (1952-1973) were:

Fry
283,385,283

Fingerling
154,994,857

Yearlings
404,282,085

Total Fish
842,662,225

Total Pounds
27,978,285

From 1976 to 1986, the WDF releases (statewide) totaled:

2,487,877,169 fish

An average of about 207,000,000 per year. This total doesn't include schools, cooperatives, tribal, or federal hatchery releases.

In 1987, all of the hatcheries in the state (state, tribal, federal, cooperative, schools) released a total (all species) of:

337,742,414

With the current discussions about the viability of hatchery fish, one has to wonder how far back do we need to go to determine whether a run is truly "wild" or does it have an appreciable amount of hatchery genetics and the subsequent off-spring are "natural origin returns". Maybe some of the fishing, in the good old days, was due to hatchery releases....



And people believe there is natives out there??????


We need hatchery fish to build wild stocks!!!

Slab,

With the Boldt Decision (US v WA) in 1974, non-treaty fishing began getting cut in half. So even though hatchery stocking was increasing, non-treaty commercial fishing began its downhill decline. Commercial license buy backs began in 1976 I think, and occurred 2 or 3 more times after that. Even tho hatchery stocking was increasing in the 1970s, it's important to remember that wild salmon and steelhead populations were nose diving at the same time due to habitat degradation and over fishing. The hatchery stocking increases could not keep up with the demands created by US v WA catch allocation sharing and the simultaneous reduction of wild fish availability.

Sg

SG would it be safe to say that when you add Alaska & Canada in the seventies through 80's that over harvest was the primary driver of the decline? Recognizing that the habitat issue & productivity were in a steady down hill run but it was the failure to recognize and reduce the harvest to the lower productivity that put the salmon stocks crash in hyper drive.

Close?

Gotta borrow freespool's sig line to underscore the point.

"A curious thing happens when fish stocks decline: People who aren't aware of the old levels accept the new ones as normal. Over generations, societies adjust their expectations downward to match prevailing conditions."
Kennedy Wame

Im all for fish harvesting at origin. We sure could handle mor URB's actually making it upriver.

It would sure solve a whole lot of problems, getting rid of the blame game would be a gigantic step forward.

Those #'s are mind bogling.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

It is interesting to read all of the opinions about the reasons for the decreasing salmon catch over the past 60 years. All are correct to some degree but I suspect they only account for the variations (noise) in the trend and not the trend. As always with salmon it is important to think about all stages of their life history and to think globally, not locally. If you are not familiar with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation concept and its relationship to salmon numbers look at the link below. Unfortunately a lot of the management seems to ignore the PDO which leads to many of the problems discussed in this thread.

PDO

Yes they are mindboggling numbers, but thats also the problem, they shouldn't be. Somehow I just think if the feds/ BPA had a small fund set aside to retire these permits as they come up for sale and allow the fish to return to a point of origin fisheries program. Wouldn't have to be a gigantic buyout, just a small every year program that might cost a few million to let retiring fisherman out, what you don't want is young guys getting back in to mixed stock fisheries. The guy that takes the BPA money to the bank everymonth probaly has that much stuck under his seat cushions.

I have to ask:

Why should the state or the feds use our money to buy out a commercial fishing license? When every other small business in the state shuts down, they don't get their license bought out. If someone decides to get out of commercial fishing, the license should revert to the state. If the license is open to be re-issued, let the state sell it at auction and put the money back into the management program.

I know that the RCW lets the commercial fisher count the license as part of his/her estate, but that can and should be changed.

Do they sell small buisnesses when they retire, if the BPA decides to flood your property do you just grab anything you can carry and run. If the highway dept just has to have your farm or house do they just bulldoze it, that kind of train of thought. What would you do, would you fight?

WN1A is on to it...

Marine survival is a huge part of the picture. The 20 (or so) year stretch that ended in 1976-77 was the last long, consistent stretch of "cold" sea surface temperatures in our region. It was also the culmination of an ever increasing coastal coho harvest that reached record proportions in 1976. When catches from all fisheries are summed the harvest of coho off our coast was in the 2 million range that year. [note: this is also when the Fisheries Management and Conservation Act (the 200 mile limit act) went into effect. Clealry the state was overharvesting leading up to the implementation of federal management off our coasts. They slowly began to ratchet down the salmon harvests]

Will we ever see those catches again? Unlikley. Even if the marine conditions became favorable again (for higher local salmon stock survival) we don't have the habitat conditions that existed in the 1960's and early 70's. Many of the instream ecosystems that existed 40 years ago are diminished or simply gone. The trend for marine ecosystems is not looking all that terrific either.

It may sound kind of goofy when people like David Dicks, Bill Ruckelshaus and Billy Frank say... "this is our last best chance to save Puget Sound"... but they just might be right. The political will needed to lead this uphill battle may be hard to find however. The Gov and the Legislature are talking and money is being spent but are we really changing the way people treat the land, the water, the air, the resources, etc.? Is the kind of "sea-change" that needs to happen, about to happen? Someone needs to point out some indicators for me 'cause I ain't seeing it.

Toss in four hundred thousand protected pinnipeds that would only need to eat an average of 5 salmon a year to equal the 2 million. No your right don't think we will ever see those days again. The 12 to 200 mile limit was put in place to remove the foreign factory trawlers from our coasts. When I was salmon trolling with my brother on his little 26fter in 1976,it was common to be fishing around 4 or 5 russian trawlers that were working up and down the twelve mile limit. Over fishing yes but not by American fisherman.

TTT

Read the opening post.

Thought a bit of historic perspective might be appropriate as we face the Commission about the pending GH Salmon Harvest Policy this weekend.

I remember those years........Monty boat launch parking lot was full 7 days a week.......weekend, rigs were parked both sides of the road coming in....AND along the hiway.

Yep those were the years......

Another trip to the top...

As coho populations have plummeted the past 2 seasons, we're all struggling to wrap our minds around the pending prospect of the most dismal opportunities for salmon fishing in Western WA since I moved here 22 years ago.

It's really hard to believe that only 7 years ago ( about two coho generations) we were ALL enjoying a bumper crop of coho regionally. Or at least what most of us believed to be an EPIC coho run.

But 'epic' by what standard?

DAM we've come a long way in a very short time... and most certainly NOT in a good way.