It really isn't just the fish, it is all natural resources. Who here used to duck hunt the Green River valley? Or deer hunt in what is now Issaquah? Or? Or?

All of our resources are at risk as we continue to expand into their range. We have a choice, but it the same one that all previous generations have had. That is, to share the world with natural resources. It may have been "easier" to ignore the problem when there were less people, but the first people to the New World certainly aided, if not caused, the extinction of a lot of big mammals.

The choice is to limit our total impact to the world and I suspect that short-term profits have determined the answer.

It was more of a guess of what will happen than what my plan would be.

I like the age limit 70 and above idea but even that won’t help wild steelhead.



Management agencies manage people, not fish. At the extremes of manage options there are two possibilities. One is no harvest, already discussed, wild steelhead numbers will be determined by our actions, pointed out by Carcassman. The other extreme is no management, harvest continues until the costs outweigh the rewards. There will still be steelhead, the short term profits will be just exactly short term. For myself the cost has exceeded the quality of the steelhead sport fishing experience. I might feel differently if I lived on a river where I could sit by the fire and plunk all day but to join the crowds, no.

SkyGuy,

Yes, with respect to steelhead, the data are generally good enough. Neither catch data nor escapement data are perfect, but they don't have to be. The estimates need only be close enough to offer consistency over time as index values. And they do that. It is different than the world of your industry. If fisheries management required the kind of precision you seem to be alluding to, there would simply be no fishing, anywhere in the world, period. Except maybe Baker Lake; even Lake Washington uses estimates.

But that isn't the point of this exercise. Here we assume the data are, if not perfect, then entirely adequate for the task at hand. The issue is that there are lots of fishermen and only a few fish. And in order to have fishing, angler-fish encounters must be limited to within the allowable impact. You can talk about data quality until you are blue in the face, but the world is going to go on by, and select a fishing management alternative that matches up with the allowable take.

Ondarvr,

The premise of these prospective fisheries is "do no harm." It's obvious that fishing won't make things any better for the resource. It never has, and it sure won't going forward. The object, if we want to fish, is how to go about it without making things worse, meaning limiting take to only those fish over and above the escapement goal when that number is not large and there is approximately zero prospect of it ever becoming large.

Todd,

Yeah, it does seem like co-management has become less than co-equal. As for incidental mortality rate, the issue continues to be muddy. I find the lack of professional interest interesting, but my guess is that it's because CNR fishing is such a small niche market here on the coast where fishing still means killing fish. Fish management without killing fish must be a foreign Rocky Mountain concept still.

It can be fun to flog the fly v gear debate over beer, but it's generally unproductive. The thing about conventional gear fishing is that anglers wanting to be ten-percenters have increasingly gravitated to more efficient and effective methods of garnering hook-and-line angling success. And that becomes the crux of this issue, where, in order to have prospective fishing, angler efficiency has to be reduced. (Fly fishing at least has that going for it.) And fishing from boats has very significantly higher CPUE than fishing from foot, it's an obvious target. Using boats (motor or drift) for access only is probably higher than walk-in access, but I don't know that it would make the kind of difference necessary for PS steelheading.

Sg

I think there is plenty of information out there already that has un-muddied the incidental mortality related to catching and releasing steelhead, and it's been out there for quite a while.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the data we have now on incidental mortality is probably more accurate than the fish forecasts we rely on right now.

So far as anglers wanting to be more efficient and effective at catching fish...well, let's just say limiting that to "conventional gear anglers" is about as smart as saying CnR fishermen "play with their food"...and is, contrary to your stated position, making an unwarranted distinction between gear anglers and fly fisherman.

I have not ever seen an advertisement in a flyfishing mag for the newest and best...

$1700 rod
$693 reel
$94 best line ever
$899 must have waders
$249 only boots that work
$132 Ascot made from the silk from virgin silkworms

...touting its ineffectiveness or its ability to help you reduce your CPUE...as a matter of fact, I'd say that most the ads say quite the opposite, and judging by what many flyfishermen are buying I'd say they believe it, too.

Fish on...

Todd

P.S. I'm out...heading off to points unknown to very effectively knock a few more coho right out of the ranks of the living

I'm sure this won't be a popular opinion but I would vote no C&R season at all. As was pointed out, the tribe will take an unknown amount to get their spring chinook. The run will get hit harder than we expect and there won't be a run to talk about in a few years. We've had zero success maintaining a wild run with the "minumum escapement" strategy.

If we leave it alone and can keep the tribes nets out of the river, there will still be fish in the river for years to come. If we let our greed get the best of us, this run be gone before we know it.. The fish just won't survive the combined tribal/rec mortality. I don't care whether you limit boats or bait or just let old fukers fish it- any combination with nets will doom the run- period!

The good ole days of spring fishing are no more. It's really sad but it's the way it is.

This is the single best argument I've ever heard for hatchery fish or at least for having hatchery rivers.

Being able to use a resource but in a limited fashion seems to be the overall theme here. Flyfishing obviously has its disadvantages from an efficiency standpoint by not being able to reach water or cover depths that conventional tackle can.(insert spey argument here)
Limiting boats and the ablity to fish out of them is another limiting factor, along with a tag system. I guess what I don't understand is; to limit the user of a resource you have to know what their impact is.

Knowing what % encounter rate a wild steelhead faced would go along ways to managing the use of the resource. I've fished long enough to know there are three types of steelhead; 1) Kamakazee - Hit almost anything
2) selective to size, color, scent, action, etc... 3) won't bite anything

So, out of a run of 4,500 steelhead...How many will encounter an angler and when they do you take into account hooking mortality, etc...

Todd,

Point or no point, the people who make the recommendations don't agree on incidental mortality, so it remains a variable that is important because whatever value is settled on would significantly affect fishing opportunity.

Wait, are you suggesting that fly fishermen actually catch steelhead? That's not what I usually read on this forum. If this place isn't an accurate source of information, I'll need to recalibrate some models. (t.i.c.)

Luckydogss,

Whether you believe it or not, most PS steelhead populations are presently at or near the carrying capacity of their respective river systems. PS wide, tribal and sport anglers are catching fewer than 4% of the wild steelhead. That is not having any significant effect on the populations. Go ahead and live with the delusion that tribal nets are the root cause of steelhead population status, but I don't have the time to waste talking about it.

Bent Metal,

It varies, but for this hypothetical example, sport fishing as previously regulated would result in an average of 80% of the wild steelhead population being hooked once or more during the season. There are places and seasons where this is really possible. Consequently angler opinion that it can't isn't going to have any effect on prospective regulations. The entire point is whether to have fishing or not, and if so, then how to regulate it so that total angler-fish encounters doesn't exceed 2,125 for the season. There are many ways to do it. I wanted to find out what methods for achieving that objective are most preferred by anglers.

Sg

Highest and best use of those available impacts is to generate maximum revenue from them.... sell 'em to the highest bidder.

On the NON-treaty side, that would essentially exclude all participants EXCEPT the very wealthiest steelheaders.

Look, in order to keep exploitation in check most of us would be left out regardless. As it stands now, we're ALL left out anyway

eyefish -

I think in your economic argument you are underestimating the impacts of the "common man".

In Salmo"s example we would expect the non-treaty recreational fishery to catch/handle 3,400 fish in a CnR fishery -0.80 x (4500-250)=3,400.

Even in the hay day of Puget Sound steelhead fishing the average catch/angler was less than 0.2/angler for the season. Use 0.20 fish/angler (a high value) we can expect the fishery to generate approximately 17,000 angler trips. That kind of effort could be expect to produce something like a million dollars (maybe more) for the local economies!

Do you think you could sell a 1,000 days for a $1,000/day to fish say the Skykomish? If so who would get the $$$? Somehow I think there is significant value in spreading that economic windfall among the local business.

Curt

in the Doc's example the money would be spread amongst various commercial enterprises with tax money going to the state. In smalma's example the bulk of the money would go to the state.

I'm not to sure what to do in this 'hypothetical' situation but I do have some ideas for the real world Skagit system.

Foremost would be the forecast: above 6,000 fish

1. No motors on the Sauk
2. No fishing from a boat on either Skagit or Sauk
3. Guides limited to two weeks per guide and no more than ten at a time
4. Selective gear rules
5. A rule for mandatory record keeping of fish encounters w/serious penalties
6. Special endorsement fee for fishing Feb - April

We really don't need more government intrusion into a recreational activity, like tracking fish encounters under threat of punishment.

Great post, one thing I notice is that nowhere has anybody mentioned the impact of poaching. In years past poaching has been contributing reason for closing the C&R fishery. Curt, are there estimates as to how many fish are poached in a C&R season? How does poaching impact the decision making process?

I fear that the recent reduction in hatchery planting will have the greedy fisherman using the "entitled" term and killing wild fish.

Lets face it, with no hatchery steelhead to mitigate the impacts on wild fish the number of angler encounters cant be measured. We don't know how many fishermen will be fishing. Most anglers will have near zero opportunity to fish for Steelhead except for a C&R season on one river system. This will skew the forecasted angler encounter numbers that we are currently using. Steelhead are like a drug for the folks that love to fish em' and they are all gonna want to get their fix.

If a limited season were to happen its gonna be a crowded river!

Stam speaks the truth

One important aspect of this hypothetical river is what other rivers are nearby and how they are managed. The impact and fishing pressure on this river X has a lot to do with what's available in the next river down the road. The health of the wild fish in the next river down the road has a lot to do with how this river should be managed too. I think we've reached the point that we need to set aside certain rivers for the well-being of the fish: likely those with the best habitat, and set aside other rivers for the fishermen.

Without fishermen, who really cares about the fish?

Wild steelhead management zones.. I like the idea, if it pertains to a river having native steelhead. A river such as the SF Sky that has shown to be a mixed stock and isolated by a falls should NOT be a WSMZ, the upper NF should based on genetics and location.

Since summer runs are non native in 95% of our streams, why couldn't we outplant summer fish and keep the winters to hatchery facilities, so we can atleast spread the pressure out in the summer and have a 1/2as* fishery?

Get off of the rivers, especially the Skagit. Too many downriver spawners are picked up in their gill nets during the May Springer fishery. However these stewards of our declining fishery seem to think it is no big deal to kill a downriver possibly three salt fish.

Also, I have caught steelhead during the Sockeye fishery in June and seen others caught as well..there is no in between with them catching their 2,500 and others. Too many white man poachers too that will feel entitled to their fish of a lifetime...shut it down!

Let it be a national reserve...

How cool would that be with only limited seasons during salmon season...ie: the fall, and early winter...

Whats the idea of a brood stock fishery on the Skagit someday....any word? Just curious