Its Official: WDFW emailing

May 21, 2015

Hoh River to close to fishing in June and July
Action: Close the Hoh River and South Fork Hoh River to recreational fishing.

Effective Dates: June 6 through July 31, 2015.
Species affected: All species.

Location: Hoh River and South Fork Hoh River outside of Olympic National Park boundaries.

Reason for action: The Hoh River population of spring/summer chinook has been near or below the floor of the escapement goal of 900 for this stock for the past nine years. This closure will reduce encounters and mortalities of spring chinook that occur while anglers are targeting other fish.

Hopefully the tribes won't be fishing as well. Those fish are in big time trouble.

During North of Falcon meetings, tribal netting was mentioned.

Don't think the tribe is going to back off, more of a concern is "more netters" than in the past.

The 4/3 plan that is used in Grays Harbor......where nets are in river 4 days and then NO nets the other 3 days....could be the saving grace for many of the coastal rivers, IMO.

I can't speak for the Tribes. But my sense is that this is what they would say:

Recreational anglers and commercial fishermen can still catch these fish in the ocean. So if these stocks are in real trouble, then shut down the ocean fishery too. All of it. Everywhere. If that happens, would these fish stocks still be in trouble?

If yes, the Tribes will also shut down their fishery. But if WDFW and the Feds are not willing to shut down the ocean fishery, perhaps these fish aren't in real trouble. Or, more likely, these fish are not important enough for the State or the Feds to forgo the substantial ocean harvest by many different user groups to protect these fish. If that's the case, why should the conservation burden fall only on the Tribes?

The Tribes see no difference between harvesting these fish the ocean or harvesting them in the tribs. Recall that 100% of the Tribes fishing in done in the tribs so if they are shut down, they lose 100% of their fishery, while the State regulated fishery (in the ocean) is still going strong.

You don't have to agree with their point of view, but we should understand where they are coming from.

The OP didn't copy and paste the rest of the rule change FYI:

Other information: Though the regulations on the river have required sport anglers to release wild chinook during the summer months for several years, the stock continues to be under-escaped and additional measures are necessary to help recover the stock.
The Hoh Tribe has also proposed a fishing schedule that reduces their impacts on wild spring/summer chinook; and Olympic National Park is closing the watershed to fishing.
Information Contact: Steve Thiesfeld, (360) 249-1201; Mike Gross, (360) 249-1210.

WOW living proof that us planted Americans can exist with the Native Americans.

Why don't they pull their skirts up and fish with the rest of us in the big pond?

Thing called U&A. Tribes are limited to specific areas where they fish in Treaty Times. Plus, fishing in the river on known stocks is significantly better biologically than the ocean mixed-stock.

Also, the the Park has kept the same Regs as last year where you Can't Keep Wild Salmon or Steelhead within the park (Hoh & Quillayute). The Park's rules are different from WDFW again this year. The change created a lot of confusion last year on the Quillayute. Where the boundary is etc.

Has the Park marked the boundary on the Lower Hoh?

I read some where, don't remember where, that no salmon or steelhead may be retained "in the Park".

Has the Park marked the boundary on the Lower Hoh????? Why would this even matter......looks like no salmon or steelhead fishing, June 6 - July 31, 2015.

Don't know, at this time....what will take place August 1. Those regulations should be available "any day now".

Here is the link to the Olympic National Park fishing Regs and updates

http://www.nps.gov/olym/planyourvisit/fishing.htm

river whore

In the Texas Hold 'Em Poker game, when a person wins the hand in the final round and on the final community card, which is called the river. Oftentimes this person will have been losing the entire hand but gambled and got lucky on the last hand. Other players at the table will often curse this person and tag him/her a "river whore"
Frederick was winning a poker hand with three of a kind Aces, but Herman got a lucky draw on the river and wound up with a straight. Frederick verbally abused Herman and called him a river whore, while Herman snickered and collected the pot

According to this blog post it doesn't sound like the tribe will be making many changes to netting this year. The tribe probably has a better idea of the fish health in the river than anyone.

Blog

"We want diverse and healthy ecosystems that support a wide variety of healthy runs and native fish. If we want that, we have to manage for that. Washington’s MSY model works against this by measuring a rivers value only by how many pounds of salmon meat it can produce a year."

I believe the blogger has a major disconnect with reality here.

I've been fishing salmon a LONG time now, from Oregon to Alaska.... much if not most of it C&R. It's taken me an awful LONG time to understand it...

BUT....

For the overwhelming majority who fish for salmon ( even here amongst the company of PP's die-hard steelhead conservationists) it is ABSOLUTELY all about the meat.

I do NOT say this out of disrespect, just calling it like I see it.... and it's taken a hella-long time to concede this.

MSY is about dead fish in the boat. Period. If one wants ecosystem values and a wide variety of life history trajectories then we have to allow significantly more fish to spawn.

Most who have looked at it suggest that current wild salmon escapement in at least the lower 48 is 5-10% of "historic". Current harvest rates are 30-50%. Say current run is 100. That leaves an MSY harvest of 30-50 fish and an escapement of 50-70.

If the current run is 10% of historic, that run should be 1,000. At a 10% harvest rate you catch 100 and leave 900. EVEN IF the 900 escapement only produces 100 harvestable it is more than now.

I really would like to see this battles focus changed to be directed at getting our Wa fish past AK and Ca.

With the unusual warm water in the northeastern pacific and the predicted up and coming El Nino I'm afraid things are going to get ugly for salmon and steelhead.

It is an interesting argument. AK and BC should "get off" southern stocks. But, WA should also get off BC stocks (Fraser, for example). And WA and OR should leave the CA fish alone.

Should this be confined only to fish or should the area that products the waterfowl be allowed to be the primary harvester?

It would only be consistent to agree with Wa and Or leaving Ca fish to Ca and same with Fraser salmon, I'm all in with terminal fisheries. IMO it promotes recovery as the investors in the recovery reap the benefit.
Interesting question about waterfowl. I see your point as Ducks Unlimited did a lot to save the Canadian nesting habitat. I'm not sure management policy can be applied to such completely different species but there are similarities in migration. Maybe there should just be a moratorium on fishing mixed /other states countries stocks until we see which ones are really depressed and then figure out some arrangement that works for all involved. It all might just take care of itself because I see AK an CA screwing their own salmon runs just as much as we have our own. They just started later and have more to work with.

I agree that the fish and waterfowl are sort of apples and oranges.

I believe that all fisheries should be terminal/extreme terminal. The region that does the spawning and rearing habitat protection should reap the benefits of harvest.

There was a recent clamor about BC proposing mining headwaters of transboundary streams. AK wants to harvest the production. On a purely economic basis, why should BC grow fish for AK? It should cost somebody to harvest the other guy's fish.

When I posed this issue on the AK board, the response was overwhelmingly 'tough tiddies'.

Take out your dams and fix your habitat, and then we can talk. In the meantime, fence "your" fish in so they don't wander into "our" waters if you don't want us to catch them. If anything we should be imposing a surcharge for "your" fish grazing on "our" herring and candlefish. They feed and grow on AK's ocean bounty, doesn't that make them AK salmon?

Yes, the AK mindset is a bit different than ours.