Smalma

These are the "facts" that I have used to support my statements. I hope that you will find that they do support what I have said. There may be more information out there to support what I have stated, but this is all that I can find in my library of information.

1) Spawning surveys (Woods, et al., 1981) of the entire Tilton revealed that there were only 23.5 of spawning habitat available.


2) Another report by Thomson and Ruthfus in March of 1969 revealed that that "spring chinook" spawning commences in mid-August in the upper Cowlitz. This is almost a full month later than you time frame that you had earlier had suggested. Spring Chinook redds should still be quite visible during stream surveys in mid October.


3) "The "principle" areas of spawning for spring chinook included the main Cowlitz River from a few miles below Packwood to Ohanapecosh River, the Ohanapecosh River, and the Cispus River, ******head (now Yellow jacket) Creek and the North Fork of the Cispus tributaries… Some spring chinook were "reported" in the Tilton River system in 1945; however, no spawning has been observed in recent years." (Lloyd and Rothfus 1969).

4) Fall chinook distribution studies indicated that approximately 28% of the total fall chinook spawning area above Mayfield area was inundated by both Mayfield and Mossyrock Dams. 10% of all fall chinooks that passed over Mayfield spawned above Packwood. In 1951 escapements of spring chinook for the Tilton was only estimated to be 200 adults (Cowlitz River Sub Basin Plan-1990).

In addition, on October 16-20 of 1936, spawning surveys were done on the Tilton by Baltzo and Jobes (Bryant -Special Scientific Report 62). They had noted that the river was heavy used by coho and also had a fairly large numbers of steelhead. They recorded 407 coho being counted on the spawning redds. In addition, a small run of fall chinook was also observed (212 spawners) and no spring chinook redds were observed.

You said; "As a consequence a spawning flight at the time of the peak fall spawning (3rd week of October?) would be after the time that the spring chinook redds would still be visible during the flight. So in fact you have not supplied any factual proof that spring chinook don't use the Tilton. Now they may not use the Tilton but you have not made your case"

These are the "facts" that I have used to support my "case". These facts strongly indicate that a few adult "fall chinook" occasionally utilized the Tilton for spawning and that almost no "spring chinook" spawning occurred in the Tilton River

Now have I made "my case" yet?

Thanks again for your candid replies to my statements. I always attempt to back them up with factual information. I guess we can both agree that we may interpret studies and their data differently.

I hope that this information will convince you of my stated facts. Now I must move on and answer Salmo's 24 page reply to this thread. He always good at coming in at the last moment and attempting to do his damage control stuff. Lets see if I can answer his question as well.


It is always a pleasure to debate fishery issues with you. You do make people think before they reply. . . I know I do!

Cowlitzfisherman