So much for rational discussion of any facts.

Yeah, my point of view is so wild and crazy! But the facts about hundreds of HPAs having been issued for dredging exceptions, no ongoing monitoring, the potentially damaging effects of dredging, and the laxness of the WDFW's rules by comparison with other wester states are not my opinion -- they are indeed facts. You simply disagree with the conclusions I've drawn from them about the need for tighter regulation.

We've dredged this ground already and ended up with nothing more than turbidity.

If those fish stocks are in such a precarious position why should anyone be allowed to do anything with them? What elevates take by fishermen to a higher plane?

Good question. Some streams are closed for various periods (such as the Stilly just recently and early last autumn) and the Skagit has been closed for a while to all steelhead fishing (at least I think so; I don't fish there myself). And on the Peninsula, only one wild fish can be kept during the winter steelhead season. So fishermen have had their take limited to a very real extent. Can anyone forecast anything but more restrictions on the Puget Sound rivers and the Peninsula in the future? It seems doubtful.

Not sure a conversation with someone else without any supporting documents, numbers would be considered facts. I could make up anything and then state someone of importance told me but it don't make it credible.

Concur. At least the Gold Prospector article which the OP disparaged quoted former employees of the EPA by name. Those quotes can be checked for veracity.

I am talking about all fishermen, not just hook and liners.

Sam Wright proposed an intereting question/position one time. He pointed out that one could view any additive mortality to salmonids as being harvest. This is harvest by hook and line (adult or juvenile), net, increased sediment due to logging roads, increased temperatures due to canopy removal, increased mortality due to dams, losses due to hatchery operations, and a myriad of other losses.

His point, and this applied to the 50:50 sharing but could be applied to any discussion of mortality, is that society (or some segments) has chosen (for example)to harvest salmonids as eggs (sediment) rather than as returning adults.

As such, the question of mortality is really about who gets it and why.

Sorry, I can't say that 416 or 393 HPAs or whatever specific number of HPAs for exceptions to the dredging windows in the Gold and Fish pamphlet have been issued, but the number is in the hundreds, according to the information provided by the WDFW to Representative Tarleton. Why would I "make up anything" to support my position? A simple check with the WDFW would expose me! Did you think of that? (You might make a number up but I wouldn't and haven't.) Go talk to the WDFW yourself and see what it has to say about the number of HPAs issued and how well those projects have been monitored. Suction dredging just isn't a priority for the department. Since the WDFW doesn't have the money to do anything other than do a cursory check of a proposed dredging project to say nothing of actually monitoring how it is being carried out, I can't fault the department.

"Those quotes can be checked for veracity" -- huh? I'm sure those two gold prospectors said what the article said they said, but just because their statements are printed accurately doesn't make them true. (I've gotta admit, though, that the picture of the happy salmon spawning away in the dredge hole almost had me convinced until I looked at the top of my screen again and read "Gold Prospectors Association of America.") And those two gold prospectors crap so much on the EPA, the media, enviro organizations, Al Gore, and the Sierra Club (and I've left a few of their targets out) in their "scientific" article that it makes me wonder why I should credit anything they say simply because they are former EPA employees. To me, they sound like nuts spouting junk science. They just want the freedom to find their big gold nugget at the bottom of a steelhead stream without "Big Government" telling them what they can do.

And your assertions are more credible that their assertions why? Rhetorically speaking, that is.

Since you are a skeptic (and not a lemming!), get your own data from the WDFW if you care to. But it sounds like you'll need to go to every HPA site yourself and do an inspection to be satisfied. You'll probably need a year or two to take a look at the hundreds of sites to see with your own eyes what the dredgers have or have not done to the streams they've exploited for their own gain. I concede I haven't done that myself, but I also don't need to get hit with a meteorite to know they exist. (You won't get any useful data on how the dredging sites have been left from the WDFW.)

Lastly, I'm not a talking dog for some special-interest organization like those two "scientist"-prospectors promoting the interests of the Gold-Digger Association in their absurd propaganda piece. That's one reason why you might give some credence to what I've said here. If not, so be it. At this point, I've said my piece, several times over, and have nothing further to add.

Have a nice day!

I am a life long Gold Dredger. I have been in hot pursuit of Gold for over 30 years and I have been politically active in defense of dredging for well over a decade. I also love to hunt and fish and enjoy many other outdoor pursuits just like all of you. I also consider myself an environmentalist because I care about our natural world, I avoid causing it harm and actively promote activities that benefit it.

I read a mixed bag of responses on here, most have a skeptical yet open mind about the perils posted almost exclusively by Smelt.

Smelt...you are a troll. I recognize your writing style and attitude from some of the other forums I have visited lately. You have been spreading your anti mining agenda to anyone who will listen...mostly just your liberal buddies...btw how is the new facebook page going? Adding that you've only been registered here a month ago and have posted only in this thread (that you started) ...I call you a troll to your face.

You are vaguely misleading on many points and outright wrong on some others...to begin.

Enforcement - the people who regulate miners are the same that regulate fishermen plus we answer to the Forest Service, BLM, DNR, Army Corps, Dept of Ecology, the tribes and potentially a host of others depending on where we work. If we are unenforced then the enforcement is far less for fishermen.

Moving boulders, rototilling the stream - If you will refer the the Gold and Fish pamphlet, starting at page 10 and continuing on... You will find that if we pull a boulder we have to put it back, if we make a hole we have to fill it. we have to disperse tailing piles,we cannot disturb woody debris, we must avoid redds, we must have screens over our water intakes...on and on. You have either never read the document or you choose to ignore it's contents completely.
I strongly urge anyone reading this thread to go get their facts for themselves. You can find our mining regulations here: http://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/00290/wdfw00290.pdf

Free HPA's for everyone - A Hydraulic permit is required if I want to do any prospecting that is not allowed in the G&F book such as longer work windows or different equipment. It's a variance to the standarg rules similar to applying for a cow tag during elk season.
Each HPA begins with a JARPA. This is a 14 page application that must be filled out in detail. There are 7 different JARPA forms or addendum's depending on what I am doing and where. Once submitted I must meet the WDFW biologist on site and physically show him what I want to do and exactly where. He then either denies the application or writes a complex approval that outlines exactly what I can do. I have several HPA's. One allows me to exceed the 2 week work window by an additional 2 weeks and only in the area from the bridge to 100 feet downstream. Another HPA requires me to call the biologist and the enforcement officer at least 48 hours ahead of when I plan to do work and then only work in two specific locations. Unregulated indeed. It would be like fishermen being asked to call the game warden before they can launch a boat? Or getting specific approval from a biologist on site to fish individual riffles or holes.

Free permits to prospectors - When the current G&F was drafted, the gold prospecting community offered to pay a fee for the permit. The WDFW declined to require a fee because the overhead to administer it would have exceed the revenue collected. I was there, you were not.

Our mining regulations are very similar to fishing regulations. They identify what gear I can use, when I can use it and break it down on a stream by stream basis. The most remarkable difference is the fishing regs tell you exactly how many fish you can kill per day and my regs are designed to prevent any from being killed ever.

Some of you have wanted to get the opinions of a real gold dredger. Here I am...I welcome your respectful dialog.
Smelt if you would like to argue the law around gold mining or your opinions of the environmental impacts...step right up...I will take you to task.

Thanks,
Dan Miller

Hi Chuck,
I have dredged Peshastin many times and the water is cold but the gold is big and chunky. You are right that you cannot replace the silt into the spot it came from but why would you need to? The boulders tend to congregate in patches where the water scours out the fines and this is where the gold collects and the dredging takes place. In other places where the bottom is gravelly is where the fish spawn and also where the gold does not collect. Silt is found in varying quantities through the stream bed profile and it along with gravel and smaller boulders are put into constant motion each winter. A stream is very dynamic and is constantly moving. If I dredged a big hole in the stream in July, you would be very hard pressed to find it the next spring.

If it doesn't feel right then you should not do it. However, I would encourage you to evaluate the impact you have against the normal impact of runoff. In the overall stream bed, the activity of a few dredges is insignificant.

I have never tried to dredge up a fish but I have know some who have tried....very aggressively and with large capacity dredges to catch some, In all the years I have been doing this you are the first person that admitted to being able to do this, this fish are simply too fast. I can say that I have suctioned up whole beer cans and watched them exit the sluice without a single dent or scratch.

If anyone is interested in some information on the potential impacts (both positive and negative) from recreational gold mining you may find the following interesting -

http://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/00293/wdfw00293.pdf

On the whole a balanced work with lots of citations from a number of studies supporting the information provided. Those citations would be a good place if anyone wants to look into more detail information. Section 7 provides a nice summary on some of the issues discussed earlier in this thread.

Curt

Carcassman has touched on an important issue that has a huge role in this and other habitat type discussions. As we should know by now when discussion the issues with our salmonids and ESA listings the focus is on the 4 "Hs". For the following discussion I'm going to distill it down to harvest and habitat looking at the ESA listed Puget Sound Chinook.

Since the time of the ESA listing of PS Chinook the fishing impacts on key stocks have been reduced approximately 50%. Under the co-manager PS Chinook fisheries management plan discrete impacts levels were determined for each of the listed stocks. The yard stick used to measure whether those impact levels were acceptable was would those levels/rate represent a appreciate risk of stock extinction a hundred years in the future.

A couple key assumptions in those assessments were the co-managers assumed that current poor marine survival would continue and that there would be no net lost in the habitat supporting those fish. It should be pretty clear to all that on the whole that last assumption is not being met. Depending on the river basin being discussed
habitat loss has reduced individual basins to produce Chinook to levels that 50 to 95% of historic levels with the average being in the 20% range. In other words on most basins there isn't room for additional habitat lost.

Unfortunately for the recreational gold miners it has long the case that as society when forced to make tough choices we focus on the lowest hanging fruit and ideally modifying that activity would effect only a small group or those without much influence. The American way!

The sobering news is that if the declining trend of habitat lost is not reversed keeping the listed fish from going extinct will require reducing population impacts from the other "Hs". Either directly or indirectly reducing those impacts will mean less fishing. Which really means less non-treaty fishing!

For the anglers on reading this the question is whether we are willing to support decreasing adverse habitat impacts on our fish resource or willing to accept the fact that we are likely to be the last generation to enjoy the steelhead and salmon fishing opportunities we have today?

Something to consider. Back to your original programing.

Curt

Thanks for your input Dan.

I was really wondering if the OP was going to bother to check out the WDFW page link I provided to the Gold and Fish pamphlet. If he had done so this article is located immediately below the G&F pamphlet. Guess it wasn't worthy of his effort.

Smalma - you are correct and your comment about the low hanging fruit is true. If they can kill of the easy targets, their wins will give them power against the larger targets.

Their strategy has always been emotional based. They need to make people feel guilty in order to get them to act and it works. The facts are irreverent only what you "feel" matters. When you read the "scientific" reports they say things like "may, could and might" but never anything definite like "shall or will".

One thing I can say is this. There has never been a single documented case of a dredge killing a fish, directly or indirectly...not one.

Look at this video of what Trout Unlimited can do in the name of fish habitat restoration then tell me again how my dredge kills fish...ridiculous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oihqt1kLfoE