There was once a chair of the state senate natural resource committee who repeatedly asked WDF for information but nope nada nothing. So he lined out all funding for harvest management and low and behold the concrete palace pretty much showed up at the next hearing! With any government agency local, state, or federal budget is not just important it is EVERYTHING! Take away or tie up funding it is almost embarrassing to watch the groveling that follows. Money always money.

Yes That! Get the trollers out of the ocean freeway lanes in the spring and summer!

Butt of course it will be the MAGA folks that cut off the money from saving the remaining fish, the last of our pristine environment, and polar bears.


Can it be a worse outcome as we now see it, than the folks that managed the fisheries for the last 40 years ?

I have never noticed any difference in policies for Pacific salmon regardless of the political parties. Words yup but not outcome.

Completely agree Rivrguy. One side may talk a good fight but they all head to the same result.

https://www.kcaw.org/2022/02/04/projecte...f-for-trollers/

How can they justify an increase in harvest?

This was an increase for this summer. Basically, fish management is about catching fish first and foremost. For some reason I believe that the PST does not fully consider the plight of WA Chinook or SRKWs. If memory serves the PST has not set escapement goals for the listed fish so there is no target that needs hitting.

Last time I checked the fish don't vote. Those SE AK trollers are economically hurting and they vote. Plus, AK is (despite some nice sockeye runs) digging itself a deep hole with their Chinook (see Yukon, Kenai, and elsewhere) and their subsistence fisheries. The whole damn Yukon is closed; recently Whitehorse ladder had counted 13 when a fully operational and properly managed treaty fishery would have put 1,000 or more past there.

C-Man

Question for you: What percentage of Puget Sound Chinook are caught in the Alaska fisheries? I've heard all kinds of numbers for years.

Tug 3-

According to the information in the draft 2022 co-manager PS Chinook management plan (table 2-9) for the majority of PS Chinook stocks less than 5% of the recent harvests of those fish have occurred in Alaskan waters.

Exceptions were the Nooksack springs (8.8%), Skagit summer/falls (19.4%), and Hoko (surrogate for the Elwha - 34.6%).

Curt

You guys in PS must be lucky. For GH with an ocean abundance of 2022 GH Chinook at bit over 31,000 of those AK & BC are to take 16250. AK takes the lions share.

Rivrguy -
Remember Tug asked about the catch in Alaska. For most of those same stocks the catch in BC waters is much higher. Typically, of the total harvest 20 to 67% of happens in BC waters. For example, the most constraining PS stock has been the Stillaguamish fish where the BC fisheries account for 55.6% of the total fishing impacts.

Curt

Gotcha but my fall back position is for years the unsaid thing has been that BC will get off our fish if we get AK off of theirs. No matter how we try to circumvent it the ugly truth is any change must start with AK.

An additional cog is this machine relates to Upriver Brights on the Columbia if I recall correctly. Given that some spawn in Canadian reaches of the river, and we fish on them most of the way to that point, we throw them a bone somewhere correct?

The URBs certainly used to spawn in BC but Chief Joe ended that. A few may go up the Okanagan. I think Canada traded electricity for fish when the dams were built. I think there was some sort of treaty.

Gotcha. Would be interesting to see what would happen when if there was say a 50% reduction in Alaska commercial catch. Personally I don’t think there should be ANY non-terminal commercial fisheries given that they’re entirely non-selective. Would be one thing if runs were doing much better, but it just seems like we’re doing this strange balancing act of trying not to teeter too far over to the side of total collapse.

One of the interesting things about salmon is we chase them all over the ocean and yet they return to predictable terminal locations at maximum weight and require a significantly lower investment in fuel.

Good way to look at it.

The Tribes have been telling us that for about 150 years (no exaggeration). We don't need to chase salmon all over the ocean. We can just wait until they return as fully grown adults.......

Their position on that hasn't changed.

The tribes are right about that and we should just let them grow big and no fishing in the saltwater then they can come back to the rivers and we will get those big 50 pounders again

Smalma,

Thanks for the info and numbers.