The best thing that could happen would be if 17 other treaty tribes all got fishing rights on the Chehalis system...then they'd have to split the tribal 50% 19 ways, and none of them would make any money at it

Fish on...

Todd

If they win this (and it looks like they will), the big issue won't be how the two tribes divide up the pie. The problem is that whatever days the Skoks get, they will almost certainly be netting below the mouth of the Satsop. Up until now, the tidal reach between Friends Landing and the mouth of the Satsop has been something of a refuge for the early arriving fish, above the gillnets, while they wait for cooler water (or whatever the hell it is they wait for) to move into the tribs. Put gillnets in there, and almost every Chinook bound for the Satsop or further upstream will get caught and handled, whether they're retained or not.

Question for you guys claiming that the 50/50 split protects the State side from losing opportunity: Whose definition of 50% are you basing that on? It's a legitimate question, because we know the QIN makes its own forecasts (which they use to set their seasons), and they're always higher than the State's. 50% of their forecast often ends up being 60-70% of the actual return. What's to stop them, faced with the prospect of losing opportunity to another tribe, from upping their forecasts a bit more? Or from filing for another reduction in the escapement goals?

I'm not ready to say the sky's falling, but this has the potential to be a big frigging deal.

Actually it is a bit more complicated than that. The Satsop sub basin is about 30% of the Chehalis Basin Coho. If the target is Satsop then to get one Coho to a tribal commercial in the Satsop the QIN would have to allow three to go above them. The watershed is like a tree with the QIN harvesting at the bottom of the trunk. If you put commercial harvest in a trib then the QIN methodology falls apart as will the states way of managing. Interesting little problem.

Then the Chehalis get a % of the harvestable above the rez and they come from the states share which means they have to get them up. Again interesting problem.

Actually, the 50:50 is to Indians, not specific tribes. In theory, Makah could take 100% of (say) the Indian Chinook in their troll fishery and no inside would be able to fish for Chinook. Except that WDFW would cut back the sporties to allow them to fish.

I have seen one tribe cork another that is further upstream. So, there really is nothing to keep the QIN from taking the full Indian share in GH and leave the Skoks with zip.

"So, there really is nothing to keep the QIN from taking the full Indian share in GH and leave the Skoks with zip."

Yep.

Been busy but I looked at this a bit. It seems that they are asking for the Chehalis between the Wynoochee & Satsop and the Satsop Sub-basin . And more less be prime owner of the tribal harvest for fish traveling through those waters. I have been told that would mean the QIN would need their permission to fish as that is the entire watershed minus Nooch & Wishkah.

Well the other shoe dropped and salmon fishing is done for the year. I am sure in the coming days many different views will be around but the reality is the Coho run did not materialize as the preseason forecast projected, in fact it tanked. So WDF&W shut things down and it is put forward the QIN will do the same. A win for conservation? Maybe yes maybe no it just depends on ones view or perspective. From my perspective it was absolutely necessary for the state to shut things down or I have little doubt the QIN would have not done so.

All that said I will urge all to stay off the personal attacks on WDF&W or QIN staff as frankly what we have experienced was the old adage " the fish will screw ya " which they did and we had a major harvest management failure by both WDF&W & the QIN POLICY staff not the technical folks which I will get to shortly. Also guys the QIN fishers fish when the people they pay to manage the harvest say to just like we Recs do. Do not blame the fishers for something they do not control.

So what happened? What about the GH Policy? Wasn't it supposed to prevent this type of thing. Again yes / no as any policy cannot cover every circumstance. So in the beginning as NOF rolled Steve Thiesfeld put forth a really good effort to insure all had the opportunities allowed by the GHMP based off the preseason forecast. The place that the bump in the road showed was around the NT Nets and the QIN unwilling to make time for them. This issue faded a bit but never really went away.

So let us do this. The Springers came in on time but peaked late which is different. The run peaked at the end of July and numbers were showing in tide water up to mid August. Summerrun Steelhead came late period but once they came the numbers ramped up very rapidly with descent numbers. In mid August with the drought things all over media many folks were worried about the Chehalis being at risk with reports of dead Chinook. So I and another GH Adviser surveyed the river from South Monte to Fuller Hill and the state went upstream from Fuller Hill. In our effort Joe and I found Coho & Chinook, Jacks, several Coho adults, trout just lots of fish and no dead fish. State same on their survey. One should also remember we are still in a drought that for our basin it is continuing to get worse as we near spawning time without rain.

After the Springers faded we had a thee week period of time just plain not much moved. Sure some Chinook were present but just not many. Then the Chinook came and the numbers ramped up quick followed by Olympic side streams getting a shot of rain and off they went. Immediately the minute the flows dropped the movement slowed and numbers of Chinook built up but folks the Coho just did not. So I and several others who are retired and fish constantly started comparing notes of where & how many fish we were seeing daily.

So in week 38 when the QIN went in it was immediately clear something was really wrong. Chinook in substantial numbers but FEW Coho. I took it upon myself to go to the fish house to verify it and what we were seeing was proofed by the QIN landings. Then this, with over 3000 Chinook in the bag the QIN pulled to get back in line with the model. Right here is where the wheels started coming off the cart. The Chinook back filled in tidewater but not many Coho. A QIN fisher brought it to my attention that not only were the Coho numbers bad but the fish were behaving strangely. How so? Well they were coming right through the bay both Coho & Chinook and not staging. Coho were being caught clear to South Monte with full ocean color. Blue back & silver white sides and until yesterday I had not caught a Coho or Chinook with scales set and that is just plain weird. I might add here that it must have been a miserable time for those pursuing Coho in the bay as they were just plain moving right through and a lot of water for so few fish but Chinook numbers appeared up. I did not fish on days the nets were in but rather both on foot and by boat stayed right with the QIN fishers.

Though the remaining QIN schedule this pattern stayed true. Yes Coho numbers ramped up early but it appears they were just peaking early not in larger numbers. In week 42 the state put in the NT nets for short fisheries in front of & following the QIN fishers. ( yes this complied with the GHMP ) Remember the wheels falling off the cart? Well the numbers were way short on Coho. Right here is where WDF&W made a very bad situation into a horrific one. They followed up with another three days then cancelled the last day for conservation. In those three days they destroyed any hope of the inland communities inriver fisheries right along with Chehalis tribal. There is no way that fishery should have taken place. Albert Einstein once said “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Well evidently WDF&W at the policy level have not figured it out. Add to the mix this. In the GHMP in the guiding principles is this. 7. In a manner consistent with conservation objectives, fishing opportunities will be fairly distributed across fishing areas and reflect the diverse interests of WDFW- managed fishers. Item 7 in the guiding principles and 4/3 are the part of the GHMP that is intended to insure GEOGRAPHIC distribution of harvest and not harvest everything out at the mouth of the river. So for those of you from the inland communities the GHMP did not fail you WDF&W policy level staff did, big time.

The management of salmon harvest prior to the new GHMP was discriminatory based on where you live plain and simple. It was a not talked just plain ignored by those who had the authority to stop it. I had hoped with GHMP that it was in the past. I was wrong!

Harsh words you say? Nope because what WDF&W did was exactly what they have done for 30 years, they mowed them down at Aberdeen. Despite a good solid management policy they still found a way to screw it up. I remember the Commission meeting where a lady flatly said it bluntly that a commercial fisher is a commercial fisher that the upper basin communities cares nothing about the color of a commercial fishers skin or ethnicity. A commercial fisher is a commercial fisher. WDF&W to this day struggles to shed the Indian vs white thing. It is just ingrained in their DNA and those NT Commercials are THEIR commercials. They cannot turn it loose and that is sad.

So here we set and what have we learned? Well WDF&W has reverted to the old verbiage of calling the Rec season Freshwater. Now the Rec at South Monte got into the fish a couple of times as they pulled up and paused. Guys to say that the geographic distribution was achieved 10 minutes from Aberdeen is ridiculous. The Chehalis is second largest watershed in the state with hundreds of miles of inriver fisheries and WDF&W appears to be trying to claim that they met geographic distribution of harvest 10 miles from Aberdeen. You can put lip stick and a dress on that pig but it is still a pig! That discrimination is what brought about my and many others from the inland communities to full revolt demanding change and working together we made our case to the Commission resulting in the GHMP. I think some folks in the concrete palace in Olympia did not just miss the boat they did not bother buying a ticket.

As to Region 6 performance? Well Mr. Thiesfeld & did well in the beginning. They really tried to do right. Then came the crunch on Coho and NT harvest and they just went South sound asleep at the wheel. Auto pilot is what it is called. Myself and many others tried to make the case for modification of the season. I took everything I could get and supplied it to the Advocacy who toiled away trying to get numbers and assumptions to staff with graphs everything to no avail. Heavens three days before the closure WDF&W opened the Newaukum for fishing. Why because in a normal year it was time for the fish to get there. When it hit the fan though Mr. Thiesfeld went all out with his staff to undo their screw up, got information and using QIN history of harvest and down sized the preseason forecast for Coho. That folks has not been done in many years.

The QIN? Well after week 38 and the much larger than expected harvest of Chinook they pulled and moved the Johns River boundary back to protect the Chinook. This is good, now the bad. Every week QIN harvest showed Coho in the dumpster and they kept right on fishing. ( remember folks the fishers fish when the staff they pay says fish ) Additionally they did not provide WDF&W catch information ( or so we are told ) to WDF&W.

So now they pull and we give them kudos for conservation? I think not as the hole created by the lack of harvestable Coho was created by massively overharvesting by tribal fisheries on a diminished Coho run. Not to be out done WDF&W finished it off with the NT nets.

So what next? No idea but for my part Monday I will put in play a Public Document Request to try and get as much information as possible to match up with the harvest timeline and make it public as always. All the Rec fishers have a right to know how this happened and most certainly the inland communities.

Talking to friends, this is the worst coho year, ever.

Thanks For bringing this all to the spotlight, Rivrguy.


Matt

Having had a much warmer than average Summer, the water temps in the rivers ran higher, longer, and I believe it put the fish off schedule.

Seen it before, but never with such alarm. Hoping the Skagit Coho will show up soon..if they don't the future doesn't look so good.

Well, I think we can safely state that El Nino is bad, bad, bad for mainland coho runs, and we've seen enough to know this year is no exception. By now, we should fully expect dramatic, overnight collapses in coho numbers every time an El Nino pattern emerges. I have to believe our co-managers know this by now, which begs the question of why they would even think about upholding a hugely optimistic forecast after the weather had already clearly demonstrated a long, dry trend.

Rivrguy's right on. I could credit the QIN with taking a week off to conserve Chinook if I actually believed for an instant that's why they did it, but the way they responded (keeping on fishing) after another week of poor Coho fishing when they went back in (one of their patented five day onslaughts, no less) suggests all they were concerned about was losing days because of taking too many Chinook early.

The argument that the GHMP was upheld throughout this debacle doesn't do much to satisfy my displeasure with losing a fishery that didn't need to be taken away. Whether it was within GHMP guidelines or not, bookending the weekly QIN slaughter with NT openers, after it was already abundantly clear the Coho weren't coming, was nothing less than irresponsible, unsound management.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that the closure doesn't seem necessary; that would be pretty dishonest on my own part. What I am saying is that it wouldn't have been necessary had the co-managers made in-season adjustments consistent with what the gillnet catch was showing us.

As regards Thiesfeld, we've been talking a lot about how Ron Warren, like him or not, has only followed direction from his superiors. As a fellow employee, beholden to the same superiors, why should we expect Thiesfeld (or Unsworth, for that matter) to run things any differently?

Finally, I agree that there is discrimination (and even racism) inherent in the current fisheries management paradigm. As much as we upriver sporties lament getting shut down because the higher priority user groups had to get theirs first (NOT talking about recs in the bay), being a second-class citizen in this game is a much better situation than the one the salmon find themselves in when our policies fail them, yet again.

Well as the dust settles on the closure I thought I should put out what the last view of the river looked like. Prior & during the last NT Commercial days the harvest numbers said lots of Chum but one did not see that up past Cosy. Then Wednesday it ramped up and by Thursday & Friday it was a huge movement. Coming back up river one day I hit 4 / 5 Sea Lions and to many seals to count in a school that went from Blue Slough to nearly South Monte. The folks fishing upstream had Coho, Chinook & Chum all at once. This is not unusual as the old broodstocking saying was the Chinook hens will come with the Chum no matter what and appears to have held true. By Sunday it was way back down but Chum were still moving be it in smaller numbers.

So don't think all is good as it is not but we wait and see from this point what the Coho do. You can hit this link for the projected flows and rainfall http://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/rfc/ and in the next 10 days Olympic side is only 3.89 in. 1.89 on the upper Chehalis side and other than a little spike we hover between near record low flows and well below average flows for this point in time. Not much to move any Coho much if there are any to move so we wait. I doubt on the Chehalis side that many will move past Porter though just not enough water. So despite the media blitz that drought is over that is not the case in the Chehalis. Each day the flows stay low the situation gets worse and if the flows do not get up the fish will spawn short of where they should. This can result in redds being blown out by high water or not just depends on what mother nature does.

Without harvest numbers the agency is pretty much blind as to what is going on outside the hatchery returns so watch the hatchery returns at Bingham & the Hump for a idea. That said this is the first time in years a Chum run has come in without being blown apart by commercial harvest so go to the rivers and watch the fish. It is fascinating to watch these guys stage up and the Chum go into spawning mode. I think the Nooch & Satsop are the easiest to get access to watch.

OK, I'm seeing the bright side as the chum run getting a decent chance to make it to their spawning grounds without gillnet interception. Glass is now half full. Do miss the coho though.

But it is so easy to fix, Salmo. we know that we can produce boatloads of coho and chum in hatcheries. If we raise enough fish we really don't need to manage.

I remember that the Puyallup hatchery almost always got its coho egg-take and then some in the face of all the south sound marine fishing and 24/7 in-river glinting. We can overwhelm the nets with hatchery fish. Just gotta get those pesky Feds and that POS ESA out of the way. Heck, we could probably overwhelm the seals with enough production. And, since hatcheries require less land and water than wild fish to produce the same catch we can develop the hell out of the State, thereby generating a bigger economy. We all win. Except, maybe, the natural ecosystem but that's a small price to pay for what we want. Fishing for whatever we want, whenever we want it, wherever we want to fish?

Well here is a article from the local paper. So read and digest it but WDF&W's effort to utilize agency double speak is way out here. Here we are guys and read and think. Now this, the QIN numbers were not posted. If they got them verbally and had the information then explain the non treaty nets in. The QIN numbers were three weeks late going up on the WDF&W website AND staff gave no indication that they had them. In simple terms they kept the information INTENTIONALY from the public to continue business as usual with the NT Nets. So much for conservation driven harvest AND a " open & transparent " process.

I got to admit Steve did as good job as I have seen since former Deputy Director Peck in what is known as "agency double speak".




Salmon fishing closed Harborwide

By Kyle Mittan The Daily World

Salmon fishing in Grays Harbor and along all of its tributaries has been closed three months early after catch data suggested that the return of coho salmon would be significantly less than predicted, according to a press release from the state Department of Fish &Wildlife.

The closure, announced on Friday, began Monday. The season was slated to run through Jan. 31, 2016.

The department, along with technical staff with the Quinault Indian Nation, uses catch data and other information to jointly predict the forecast for each year’s upcoming season, said Steve Thiesfeld, regional fish program manager with Fish &Wildlife. The system isn’t perfect, he added.

“It’s not just one party pulling a number out of the air. There’s actually lots of working together with the best info,” Thiesfeld said. “It’s not an exact science.”

Still, the predicted numbers were far more optimistic than what current catch data has shown, forcing the department to call off salmon fishing in the Harbor and along the Humptulips, Hoquiam, Chehalis, Wishkah, Wynooche, Satsop, Black, Skookumchuck, Johns, Elk and Newaukum rivers and Van Winkle Creek, a statement from the department says.

Thiesfeld said he couldn’t give an exact diagnosis for the shortage, but a good guess, he said, was that survival rates in the ocean have ebbed.

“The tools that we had in front of us weren’t able to pick up what appears to be a systematic decline in ocean survival rates. … At least for right now, that’s what it appears to be,” he said. “We have known that we were entering a period of lower ocean productivity, but we’re a little surprised it’s caught us this hard this quickly.”

Dave Hamilton, a local recreational fishing advocate, feels the Quinaults and Fish &Wildlife did not communicate effectively to determine an accurate forecast. Now fishermen across the board, Hamilton said, are paying for it.

He believes the tribe may have over-harvested what was already a thin salmon run for the season.

“The reason we’re closed is not because there wasn’t any salmon left to harvest,” Hamilton said. “The reason we’re closed is because WDF&W and the Quinaults harvested them up and would not recognize that the run was smaller and that all indications were it was going to be smaller.”

Ed Johnstone, a policy spokesman for Quinault fisheries, did not return a message asking whether the tribe would close its fisheries to correspond with the Fish &Wildlife closure

Hamilton contends that Quinault fishermen have provided their catch data later than usual this year. Thiesfeld said that treaty or non-commercial fisheries are required by law to fill out “fish tickets,” and that the data typically makes it into the state’s database within six days of it being reported. Quinault fishing data, he added, is even more timely.

“We were pretty aware of where the Quinault Tribe was on their catch,” Thiesfeld said. “I’m not aware of any lack of communication.”

A more important issue, Thiesfeld said, was interpreting the data mid-season. The in-season update that ultimately led to the closure, Thiesfeld said, “hasn’t been done for quite some time in the Harbor.”

“The dilemma in fisheries management is, if the catches are low, does it mean the run is not coming back as you predicted or does it mean the run is late?” Thiesfeld said. “Conversely, if you have really good catches, does that mean run is early or the run is big?”

Poor salmon stocks, Thiesfeld said, have affected much of the state, including Puget Sound and the Columbia River.

And this and this should not surprise anyone, well anyone who understands the system.

Hi Everyone,

I want to bring you up to speed on the coho situation in Grays Harbor. We were called this morning by Quinault Indian Tribe with concerns about hooking mortality of coho in our steelhead and gamefish seasons that are still open in the Chehalis and Humptulips basins, and the conservation need for wild coho. After a long and difficult day of coordinating with the Director, acting AD Norman, and soon to be AD Warren, and 2 conference calls with QIN, we decided to close the steelhead and gamefish seasons in the harbor and tributaries to ensure continued support for conservation actions. We have relayed to QIN by voicemail this afternoon that: 1) we will be closing the gamefish fisheries, 2) that we will be hard pressed to keep hatchery coho closed in rivers with hatchery production once egg take is met, and 3) we want to continue to have a conversation about when is an appropriate time to open winter steelhead fisheries while minimizing coho impacts.

You should expect the closure to take place at 12:01 am on Friday.

I’m sorry to be the one bringing more bad news. As always, please give me a call if you have any questions or just need to yell at someone.

Steve Thiesfeld
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
Region 6 Fish Program Manager
48 Devonshire Road, Montesano, WA 98563
Steven.Thiesfeld@dfw.wa.gov
360-249-1201

I knew this was going to happen..

Looks like Thiesfeld is adjusting well to his new job. He'll be up for promotion in no time at this rate.

Ack. Just saw the last update. I suppose this means the QIN won't start their "steelhead fishery" until egg take is met, right?

Does this probably mean no December humptulips steelhead then? I love that early fishery.