Has anyone figures this one out yet on the Cowlitz?

99% off all the coho that are being trapped at the new Cowlitz Falls fish collection facilities are products of hatchery planted fish. And they will be (and currently are) receiving the "same protective status" as the wild fish do. You got to ask yourself, what in the hell is WDFW doing! 99% of these fish (coho) have been hatchery fish for well over 30 years now. It's just another typical blunder that the WDFW has created, and now we, the fishermen, will be loosing our "opportunity" to harvest these hatchery breed fish, just because some group of jerks didn't think ahead. There is no logical reason to create a "new natural run" of coho on the Cowlitz. This is a perfect example, of a river that you should be allowed to harvest coho with adipose fins attached. If your logic says otherwise, please share it with me!

So far this year alone, about 70,000 "hatchery" adult coho have been passed into the upper Cowlitz for "natural production". When the smolts from these 70,000 adults are collected, and passed through the trapping facilities at Cowlitz Falls, Almost every single one of these smolts will now become a "wild" coho which means that you won't be able to harvest them when they return as adults! Next year you will be seeing so many "wild" coho that you will be schocked! They will all be born from the 80,000 adults hatchery coho that were pasted up last year and the year befor.

Think about it people, Tacoma is in the process of cutting back our fisheries on the Cowlitz because it is taking away from their 17 million dollar profit margin each year. Now we have our great smart WDFW passing 70,000 adult coho into the upper Cowlitz for natural production. The simple results of that action will eventually lead to down sizing the production of the coho on the Cowlitz. While that is going on, all of your future production of coho will be falling under the protection of being considered "wild" because they will have all of their fins attached (no clipped adipose fins). So that means you will not have and opportunity to harvest these fish.


Cowlitzfisherman