Good points Bob! Let's hope that in 10-20 years the wild runs on both the Quillayute and the Skagit are good enough to support limited harvest and C&R fishing.


stlhdh2o,

My interest in charts and numbers is not oriented towards making an argument so much as it about finding some basic realities. We all have our views and prejudices and those will be reflected in our arguments but the charts are not the arguments we present although they can serve in substantiating or refuting a position.

My position towards the blanket ban has everything to do with personal preference and to me, without a harvest fishery they are good only as museum pieces. That does not mean that I'm not interested in their sustainability any more than one might be against sustainability because they desire to catch them just for fun. Either way there will be impact in the form of mortality and a reduction in successful spawning numbers. Without sustainable runs we can have neither option for long.

I therefore take the position that if the sustainability of any stock is threatened the fishing for them should stop. I have mixed feelings about fisheries for harvestable stocks when threatened stocks are likely to be caught as bycatch.

C&R only fisheries or fly fishing only fisheries might be useful to provide special or additional opportunity but neither are viable tools for anything beyond allocation. To argue for a lower impact fishery on a threatened stock is to argue for taking a half-a$$ measures to protect that stock. Where do you draw the line?

I do have concerns for the sustainability of the Skagit and at this point wonder just what the numbers are saying. I should take the time to get the smolt counts to better understand what has brought about the low returns starting in the year 2000.

If the Canadian and US experts are to be believed the problem is with low ocean survival throughout the streams in Puget Sound, lower mainland B.C. and the east side of Vancouver Island regardless of management policies and inland environments. Streams with wild harvest, streams with hatchery harvest and WSR, streams with C&R only and streams closed to fishing all saw the adult return numbers plummet to similar degrees despite their being everything from wild and pristine to urban troughs.

On the other hand we can look at the Queets where the tribes argue for an escapement of 2400 and the WDFW for 4200. Excessive harvests there averaging more than half of the returning adults for the last 8 years, partly due claimed forgone opportunity, have caused returns to plummet so far that these fish are very threatened unless the harvest practices change.

So yes stlhdh2o, harvest is important to me and so is the sustainability of the fish. If I were convinced that all steelhead stocks in Washington were threatened I would still oppose the ban on harvest without including a ban on intentionally catching them just for fun.

Should we continue harassing, maiming and killing threatened steelhead until they are irrevocably damaged?

Should we continue harassing, maiming and killing sustainable stocks while we exclude those who would kill and eat them?

My answer to both questions is no. Yours?