Ive heard from some that our healthy rivers, (meaning the ones on the OP), are at carrying capacity. Meaning they produce as much as they can. Meaning that harvest hasent really affected the number of fish we have today. Meaning even if we didnt harvest any fish the rivers wouldnt produce any more.

I dont buy it. I think it is total bull.

As some of you know I made a trip last fall to a remote small river on the south west side of Kodiak island. This river is 20 miles long and has about the same flow as the Dungeness river. It has a large lake which it flows out of. It was amayzing to see a river that was producing up to its full potential. At least as close as we will ever see.

Well anyways this river has a weir at the mouth where all the fish are counted between may and the end of September. I did some research recently to find out what the counts were. I was amayzed to find out what a total wild river is capible of producing.

This year was a humpy year. Your not gonna believe this but 1,687,000 returned to the river this year. 960,000 sockey returned this year. 7,600 Kings this year ( lower than past years). And so far 13,500 silvers. This river has tens of thousands of Dollys (more dollys than I have ever seen numbers of salmon in any of the river down here). And gets an escapement of 4,000 to 13,000 steelhead a year (which are not counted anymore).

Not includeing dollys and steelhead thats 2,668,100 salmon to one small 20 mile long river with the flow of the Dungeness with no hatchery. Almost three million salmon.

Thats more fish in one small trickle than the entire Columbia system gets in a year. Thats more salmon than the entire puget sound and washington coastal coho and chinook runs combined. We are talking about one little river.
Can you even comprehend this, I cant and ive seen it.

What I am saying here is that our fish here are just plain screwed.

We have decinated our fish runs so bad that we will never know or have any idea how many fish there sould or could be.

Our rivers cant be produceing even 5% of their carrying capacity. There is just no way. I dont care what logic or science anyone one can show me I just wont believe it.

Heres some more interesting info. This river that I am talking about was almost wiped out 50 to 60 years ago. It had a cannery at the mout and they just trapped all the fish that came up river untill there were no fish left. After the river was left alone it came back all by itself. No hatchery no nothing Total wild stocks. It receeded itself in less than a half century without any help from man.