Thought from last nights meeting and a quick review..basically painted a very bleak picture for the next couple years of steelhead.

Main point were that all but 3 of our major watersheds are all under escapement this year..
*Chehalis is 2000 wild steelhead under
*willipa is 500 under
* queets/clearwater 650 under
*hoko is 500 (they have ZERO fish at the hatchery now!!)
Humptulips is 600 under as well!

Hoh and upper Quinault are like 300 above, but I don't feel that's enough to allow a fishery, IMO.
and the Quillayute system is 3300 fish over...which isn't really that much, certain NOT a good year out there, but they have a lot more wiggle room than any of the other coastal streams.

With that being said, they gave us 4 options
1. early closure (like Feb 15th) -this way they could max efforts on hatchery fish before the wild component really shows up.
2. Quillayute only - since this is the only system above escapement more than 10%, open it, and only it for fishing, rest of the coast is closed
3. Gear/harvest restrictions - shifting rules coast wide to no bait, barbless, and close the retention of all trout under adult steelhead size (to protect future populations) and *my fav* close fishing from a floating device on several streams.
#4. Close all coastal streams.

Obvious 1 only shifts out pressure, still has bait and some higher hooking mortality, and disproportionately effects the early part of the wild run.
2 has obvious issues because with the Quillayute system only being over by 3k, it most likely won't support the 80% western washington fisherman flocking to it to recreate, not to mention the large influx of GUIDES that would be there as well.
3 does a good job of evening out pressure and still allowing access, lowers hooking mortality and effectively closes down certain sections of river not fishable on foot...BUT it doesn't take into account how some of the streams like the Chehalis are dangerously under levels and we don't need to be pounding on stocks that are ALREADY under escapement and HAVE BEEN the majority of the last ten years!
#4...well this one is obvious, DEFINITELY the smartest move, but also definitely the one we will get the least public...or guide (shake my goddamn head) for!

So I feel that a heavily modified #3 Should come down the line, closing rivers like the Chehalis and some of its tribs not doing so well, the willipa bay streams, queets/clearwater, and shifting the ones closer to the escapement goal to gear restrictions and on smaller tribs no floating devices.

It's NOT good, and netting has about 1% to do with it, our overwhelming data shows HUGE losses of juvenile steelhead as they outmigrate along the coast...that couple with incredibly poor ocean conditions the last 3 years and it start to make sense... reading between those lines I'll remind you that we still have 3 brood cycles out there maturing that have had to deal with those poor conditions their whole lives, so I would guess the outlook for 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 aren't going to look much better. Ocean conditions have improved over the last year but we don't know how long that will last before the PDO(pacific decilosilation) becomes an issue again. With that being said a coastal closure would most likely mean a closure of tribal fishing as well (me personally I'm about 95% confident that would happen honestly)