Stopped by the hatchery and noticed that there were alot of nice kings in the holding area. Why not a season on these guys? You can keep silvers, why not kings. Why even spend all the money raising them if sportsman cant even get a crack at them?

Does anyone have a logical explanation, or guess?

Well, take this for what it's worth...

I heard they're concerned about those hatchery kings hurting the native king run and don't want to encourage king taking in the river where native kings could be endangered.

It may not make any difference anyway......

IF the law says you cannot kill a chinook or do anything that could endanger a chinook, I don't see how the state could ever again open salt or fresh water to chinook or blackmouth fishing, even on C/R. C/R could potentially endanger a fish.

It may be we will never see the straits etc open for kings or be allowed to fish at any time chinook are present in a given river or saltwater.

Just like they closed Hope Island chinook fishing in the 70's and never re-opened, all sports/commercial chinook fishing opportunity for chinook now appears vulnerable to me.

It's also interesting that according to the newspapers, several chinook runs are larger than they have been for years and the scientists can't figure out why. I wonder if it could be because commercial netting has been cut back. Maybe scientists should be looking more at catching than ocean survival rates.

One thing for sure, I'm paying dearly for the "sins of the past" as my hobby is made illegal.

The chinook you saw at the Wallace Hatchery are summer chinook that Doug Hatfield (Hatchery manager) and the others at that hatchery have been building for years. Many of us catch/release these fish as incindintal catches while summer steelheading. They are beautiful, chrome bright, summer chinook which start returning to the hatchery around June 1st. These fish do not spawn till fall and can't take much abuse so be careful in handling them when releasing. As far as any harvest potential we need to convince Curt Kramer of WDFW that this particular stock is healthy enough in the Skykomish for a selective fishery, marked fish only. The problem is that WDFW manages the Snohomish system chinook run collectively, meaning summer and fall run together. As you know the fall run chinook returns are way below harvest levels, therefore no fishery. We need WDFW to consider these runs independently, that might allow a shot at the marked summer run on the Sky, say a season from June 1 through July 30, and still have negligible impact on fall run chinook. Bank walker if you want more info come to one of our meetings. We meet the third Tuesday of the month at the PUD Building in Monroe, on Fremont Street at 7:00 PM.

Good luck

Gary Bee
President of the Sky Valley Chapter of Trout Unlimited


[This message has been edited by Beezer (edited 07-04-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Beezer (edited 07-05-2000).]