I’ll be reaching out to Larry Phillips today. Will provide update.

RG, In talking to Phillips, I don't hold out a lot of hope but I still want to hear what he has to say.

Couple of folks asked just how we got the agency to do things differently? Well it was not out a desire for change on their part but rather in military terms a cease fire. It happened by chance as we had a early high water and the adult weir went under water and a substantial number of Chinook came in out of the river and were stuck mixed with our brood. Past history taught us that you cannot return captured brood to the river that have been held in ideal conditions as for whatever the reason most just end dyeing before spawning and we had no way to determine who was who! So we asked permission of the hatchery ops to go past our authorized egg take and due to the unusual circumstance he authorized one time one time only.

Well weeks later our team finds out the the harvest managers said no and as I recall the hatchery staff were instructed to dump the over permit wild Chinook eggs into the river and called it " planting early". Now I can say the volunteers looked at it somewhat differently and one volunteer's letter to the editor of a local paper called it "murdering our babies ." It is safe to say it went down hill from there to the point it was personal between staff and the volunteers. That is when Mr. Peck got involved and got staff and the volunteers together in one room and frankly chewed everyone's ass up one side and down the other.

Long and short of it the Chehalis volunteers & designated staff met once a month and worked on issues that revolved around volunteer enhancement issues for several years. One caveat was harvest was never discussed, Skookumchuck and Wynoochee mitigation, just a wide range of issue but NO harvest issues. We did a lot of good work I think and to this day I still call Jim Scott boss as he taught / guided us through the world of salmon genetics in our efforts.

That is the level of commitment from both the local community and agency staff that is required to effect real change.

That was a good process. It does take a commitment by all participants to find workable solutions, not get everything they "want".

While talking with others this, things like Skookumchuck Mitigation fish are not likely to ever change. Just to many diverse interest that don't mesh that well. It is WDFW monies that they have the choice on what happens. I think maybe even Nooch mitigation is something to look at.

Summerrun Steelhead are a viable opportunity to do things differently just as using Aberdeen Lake Hatchery to do substantial Chinook production. By altering our harvest interest we can do things that benefit fishers both tribal and non tribal. Just as importantly reduce pressures on the chronically under escaped salmon in Chehalis tributaries in the tide water reach and Steelhead. Things like Chinook at Aberdeen Lake Hatchery are low hanging fruit with not much added cost but huge benefit. Additionally Summerrun Steelhead done properly would in the 400k smolt range would provide huge opportunities.

This thing were we have driven Late Coho, Lower Basin Coho, and Winter Steelhead right into the dumpster with harvest has to stop.

Given the mindset of QIN (all Chinook are the same) and a push for summer runs how possible would it be to basically have a strong hatchery program for Chinook with goal of having a bay/river net fishery as the primary goal and a hatchery summer run rec fishery as the primary rec goal? The other stocks would be subject to "artisanal" fisheries (low impact, low harvest, "value-added" as they rebuild with harvest spread through the basin.

The NI Chinook, primarily, would be in the ocean. The Tribes would get their steelhead as incidentals/winters. I have no idea how it would pencil out but there are too many competing factors, it seems, to go all out fishing on all of them.

Well the Nation has for the most part with salmon managed their fisheries to the escapement goal. The exception would Humptulips Coho but then only the state separates the Hump from GH. All GH fisheries are managed to the aggregate not trib by trib and have been managed for the wild escapement for Chehalis / GH.

To say as with anything fish that issues would need to be sorted out is absolutely true. The other side of the coin is how is the present enlightened manner of doing business working out for ya?

As they said at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark "We have our best people working on it".

400k summers!!! That would be bigger than huge! I remember back in 2009 the Nooch got an excess summer run plant of 142k. Normal = 50-60k. The summer of 2011 was lights out! Limits every trip! Sport harvest over 2100 almost triple the norm.
Another example of excessive summer plants was out of the Skamania Hatchery in 1987. IHN broke out in the hatchery so they kept and released all 300k in the Washougal. 1989 and 1990 returns off that set records. In 1990, 8000+ returned to the hatchery, 5600 harvested. I got in on that for 2 yrs worth and it was double digit hookups every float from the park to the bowling ally. A short float.
I think you could split that Nooch 400k and put half in the Hump. God that would be fun!

I may have mentioned this before but, especially with steelhead, it seems that large (in excess of 100K) plants are necessary to get good returns. Some of this may be that a plant of 10-20K may represent 5 or fewer females so inbreeding can be a problem.

Consequently, I would be more inclined to support single large plants versus scattering them around to a lot of streams. Pick a few rivers with, besides a hatchery that can raise them, great access to boat and foot anglers and good collection facilities. lastly, one must be willing to write off the wild stock in that river.

GH has no wild Summerrun Steelhead only Late Winters and they do not cross breed. One would want to do multiple sites where conditioning ponds could be utilized high up in a stream. Example would be some at East Fork Satsop but also West and Middle fork. Many miles of stream and no wild summers or Springers. Other places in the Chehalis such as mainstem Porter to Skook / Newaukum and those two tribs themselves would have to dodge Springers. This would limit months and stream reaches one could fish which is pretty much what exist now. High up river not so much and that is a lot of river miles.

It is a different mindset on how to approach the utilization of hatcheries for opportunity. CM is right in my mind that a substantial program would result not just adults but a vastly larger gene pool for the brood. Small programs have few adults in the brood which is simply not a good thing.

I remember when we were first showing a concern about genetics. Hatchery fish were, of course, evil, inbred, they source of all evil while wild fish were perfect. Yet, many of our wild runs, especially of Chinook, numbered in the hundreds in a whole river while the hatchery runs were in the thousands to tens of thousands and they're inbred????

We were talking small eggtake from releases such as 80K Summers or 150k late Coho and simply the number spawned to get those small releases. If one was to take say 250K eggs through the spawning time then utilize only 80k with a portions of the take spread out through the entire return of the run it works better.

If you spread it over the whole run, that might work. But, if you took those 250K and then sipped the fry as the hatched for grow-out (as WDG used too do with steelhead) then the receiving site gets eggs from only a few pairs.

When HS explained it the concept was to get as much genetic variation as possible. Your way past minimum eggtake with the tray rack full and after picking you take so many from each tray until you get your number. Now that means you dispose of the eggs not needed but the number of females & males utilized goes way up because you only take a % of many vs few which is the idea. Widen the gene pool not narrow it. Not much more in actual cost either.

Yeah, that is a good way to get good genetics off of a "small" release. Or, like they used to do at Hoodsport, take 5-60 million eggs and release the lot of them. I mean howmmuch genetically diverse is that stock than one poking along at 200 spawners?

No idea but it certainly in short term some but long term much more was HS thoughts. It certainly is not a silver bullet but rather a long term approach to give a hatchery fish a greater diversity in its genetic pool. It is not an answer for all the ills in past hatchery practices but a low cost tool to improve a segregated hatchery stock.

So we are still tracking Late Coho at Bingham and this is getting more than interesting! Posted up previously a couple of weeks back the 2021 the rack report was 1290 H and 35 W and for 2022 same week it is 2750 H and 115W.

January 20 2022 report is 5300H 345W and same in week 2021 is 1310H 35W. I mean like crap this shows the effect on Late Coho that harvest has had. Keep in mind that 2021 was not a good year at all and numbers are 2020 for Normal timed as Coho come back after the Dec 1 start date for Coho report year. 320% increase on the wild is awesome as is 400% and change for the hatchery Coho. The wild fish have been pounded into the ground for years and it is one of those things that the QIN have to shoulder most of the blame as they harvest Steelhead in Dec & Jan when very few Steelhead are present and take Late Coho as incidental. Recs have also had impact but not to the same degree.

Skookumchuck numbers are even more of an eye opener. Same week thing as Bingham Skookumchuck is 2022 937H 21W and 2021 was 113H 1W.

That December net fishery for "steelhead" has always been about those late coho...not sure why anyone would pretend otherwise, and your numbers really bear it out right now.

Fish on...

Todd

It was probably because WDF ended coho management 11/30 (standard end in PS) and gave over management to WDG for steelhead. Part of the reasoning may be (at least this holds in PS) that NI fisheries net fisheries are mandated to end 11/30 unless there is an emergency. So, WDF turned a blind eye to coho taken in the steelhead fishery because the main coho catch was earlier and these were management and accounting outliers.