I agree that fishing's been tough (worked 4 hours for one coho on Monday), but it was about this time last year that things really got hopping around Monte, so I'm still confident numbers will improve. With the rain we're getting this week, I suspect we'll have a pretty good idea about the state of the coho run by the weekend.

I usually don't catch a ton of jacks, but it does seem like they're more or less absent so far this year. No idea what that means. Hopefully, they're all just waiting to come back as adults and we'll start seeing them soon.

how many Chinook did WDFW have as harvestable???

12113

Sure hope this rain pulls the silvers into the Harbor and river. I'm home this week hoping to get well enough to go fishing this weekend. I couldn't hook a single silver while on the Columbia, so I'm hoping to connect with some flashy dancers in the Harbor. If you see me out there, please understand that the flask is for medicinal purposes only. Oh, and celebration of landed silvers.

My recent post had several folks concerned over the numbers Chinook harvested by the QIN. The QIN harvest came in above expectations for Chinook but Coho are a no show. Now in the big picture the tribal 2 day set says .............. really nothing other than the QIN need to be keenly aware that the Chinook staging hard in the lower reaches and they could blow through the projected harvest numbers, which would not be a good thing. The other side is maybe the run is larger or early or just about anything so one waits to see. It is interesting that just after PFMC agrees to a lower Chehalis Chinook escapement goal off QIN data then NMFS fires back with the over fishing on the registry. Keep in mind the overfishing is occurring in the MARINE fisheries from AK to OR.

Now Coho is different. A local gentlemen, whose handle is Softbite, has been bringing forth that the ocean PDO is tanking. Below is a down & dirty description of the PDO for those not familiar with the term. Then despite the rain we are well below average flows. Also the early rain scooted the fish holding in tidewater upstream. It is not uncommon in dry years for Coho just park and wait for a weather change to before doing anything. The other side of the coin is that the ocean Coho fishery has been under what was modeled and it came up short on Coho is the thought of many folks. Add to the fact last year we caught a lot of 4 to 5 lb Coho both male & female, which is just weird. Then this year Coho jacks appear to be scarce. Additionally when we do find Coho this year many are the 4 to 5 lb range ( males so far ) so it begs the question, "is the run going to be much smaller than forecast" ? Maybe yes / maybe no but I will stick my neck out and say Coho are going to be short. Now with the runsize forecast we have lots of room before the numbers drop below escapement so no need to panic.

The one thing I am certain of is the timeline for the Coho run is not going to be what we call "normal" and one needs to be adaptive for timing and methods. Going to be a interesting couple of months to be sure.

PDO:

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is a robust, recurring pattern of ocean-atmosphere climate variability centered over the mid-latitude Pacific basin. The PDO is detected as warm or cool surface waters in the Pacific Ocean, north of 20° N. Over the past century, the amplitude of this climate pattern has varied irregularly at interannual-to-interdecadal time scales. There is evidence of reversals in the prevailing polarity of the oscillation occurring around 1925, 1947, and 1977; the last two reversals corresponded with dramatic shifts in salmon production regimes in the North Pacific Ocean. This climate pattern also affects coastal sea and continental surface air temperatures from Alaska to California.

During a "warm", or "positive", phase, the west Pacific becomes cooler and part of the eastern ocean warms; during a "cool" or "negative" phase, the opposite pattern occurs. The Pacific (inter-)decadal oscillation was named by Steven R. Hare, who noticed it while studying salmon production pattern results in 1997.[1]

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation index is the leading empirical orthogonal function (EOF) of monthly sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) over the North Pacific (poleward of 20° N) after the global mean SST has been removed, the PDO index is the standardized principal component time series.[2] A PDO signal has been reconstructed to 1661 through tree-ring chronologies in the Baja California area.[3]

We have been fishing Sekiu. I have a trailer up there all season. There are 3 in our group. There are a lot of silvers biting but the size is 4 to 5 pounds. I have seen few 10 pounders caught and nothing over that. Good coho are 8 lbs. A few years ago we were catching 12 pounders and bigger but not now. When I clean the coho I am not finding anything in their stomaches. So the size up seems to be consistent with GH. I hope in another week they might get bigger but that might be wishfill thinking.

Perhaps the fact that my one coho on Monday at S. Monte was an 11-lb. hen will serve to provide hope for some more respectably-sized recruits.

Hit the GH opener Wed. Thurs. focused on the So. channel. Marked tons of fish but few biters? Released a few kings and a few other takes but only one Coho 8#. Strange thing about the bite was I had friends up in the No channel, Willipa, and out in ocean. All with same report... few biters but tons of fish marked. Talk of the Charter fleet is that earthquake off Chile may have turned fish off in salt? Even bottom fish charters struggled? Anyway stranger things have happend and hope the coho show.

LOTS AND LOTS of coho around Elma. Same story, the odd one caught, but mostly lock jawed. They are around, just not grabbing at anything really. Bait, spinners, twitching jig, and everything in between. Nothing. Chinook on the other hand, will take anything. Kind of funny. To bad you can't keep any hatchery kings on the Chehalis, caught a couple nice chrome fish. Oh well.

QIN pulled and are not fishing week 39 (this week) It is on their website under regulations. ( Chehalis )




CHEHALIS RIVER & GH AREAS 2A, 2A-1, 2D COMMERCIAL FISHING REGULATION
2015 FALL SEASON CLOSURE FOR WEEK 39- C2

TO: Quinault Tribal Off-Reservation Fishermen Quinault Tribal Law Enforcement

FROM: Quinault Business Committee
DATE: September 18, 2015
SUBJECT: Chehalis River and Grays Harbor Areas 2A-1, 2A, 2D - Setting Closure during Week 39


This regulation cancels Regulation Cl, dated August 14, AND INSTITUTES A CLOSURE OF this fishery during week 39, all of next week.

A NEW REGULATION WILL BE ISSUED NEXT WEEK TO ADJUST THE SCHEDULE BEGINNING WEEK 40 WITH THE SAME REMAINING WEEKS TO FISH AN ALTERED SCHEDULE.

A NEW DEADLINE FOR THE WESTERN BOUNDAY OF THE FISHERY IN AREA 2D WILL BE INSTITUTED.

Rivrguy:

Are the QIN guys not fishing because thery're concerned about how many kings they caught last week, or is it because of fears that the coho run will come up short?

Probably a stupid question, but kudos to the Tribe either way.

As I understand it the number of Chinook caught last week ended up close to 3k so if they fished they could blow through the Chinook impacts modeled before they get to Coho. It was getting down to Russian Roulette time for them and they chose the correct action to address it.

We have changes with the QIN ( GH ) schdule. Take a peek as it will affect many. Keep in mind the QIN pulled this week for conservation of Chinook.

http://www.quinaultindiannation.com/Fishing%20Regs/chehalis%20commercial.pdf

Question is.......What happens if they start netting 9/27, at noon, and there are lots of Chinook in the catch?????

Wondering if the schedule would again be adjusted????? Just wondering....

75% of the catch in the south channel yesterday was chinook judging from what I saw yesterday. And catching was fair to gods for a few hours. The net WILL slaughter those fish.

Keep in mind on the state side we are in the 3/5 penalty box for failure to make Chinook escapement in recent years. So after that I was told that the QIN got nearly double their modeled take on Chinook in week 38 two day set. This week (wk 39) when pulled they were modeled at 2784 and that is the prime Chinook week. This coming week the modeled impacts are 1317 and for the entire season the QIN Chinook harvest is 8917. (Chehalis H+W)

So whats up? Gut check time.............it looks like Chinook are at forecast runsize or larger. I think larger. Now Coho that is different. I have not caught a Coho ( in tidewater ) with scales set yet. Bright, straight out of the ocean moving upstream slowly ( no floating back ) and not biting normally. Coho appear to be short in the numbers game. In fact the QIN were modeled at 10k for this point in time with 15k at the end of this week. So we are about to hit the prime two week Coho window and that will tell everyone, something. Modeled at around 15k Coho for the next two weeks ( before getting back the lost days last week ) this should be interesting. I do not think they are there.

As to Willapa the NT nets are having trouble not blowing natural Chinook numbers apart AND NO COHO SHOWING. No public meetings but rather conference call time with advisers. A couple of Willapa Advisers hang around here so they can fill in the blanks if they choose to. So the agency appears to be sticking to conservation objectives. Then the 800 lb gorilla, NO COHO! Same as GH.

I saw that Westport was way short of coho too. There a trend out there?

Much of the South Channel is excluded by the current Quinault Boundary.

So this map shows no tribal nets on inside of boundary? And is this the boundary for non tribal commercials nets as well? Are nets not in the river itself?
On another note, Melanie and I have scraped out a silver each for the 3 days we have launched out of Monte, two males of about 6 lbs. with some color and scales beginning to set, and a real chromer female of about 9 1/2 lbs.on Saturday. We released 3 kings on Sunday, 20, 25, and a real brute of about 27 to 30 lbs. that took Melanie on a real trip. Had to fire up the engine and chase it down, towed that canoe right around, even with drift socks in! I guess that 4 in and 3 out is making a difference in numbers of kings in river. Maybe we can make escapement this year!
We had a number of drivebys and a couple that busted off bottom hooks, has anyone else had red matsuo sycle octopus hooks break line at the point where the hook eye turns in? I think there may be some sharp edge that cut lines at knot. Didn't have that problem with the blackish sycles that they make, appears to have a smoother edge. Def. best day for us was Sunday, had the most hookups. Bob R

So this map shows no tribal nets on inside of boundary? CORRECT And is this the boundary for non tribal commercials nets as well? NOPE Are nets not in the river itself? THE TRIBAL NETS GO TO JUST BELOW S MONTE