To set the record straight only:

Quote from Fishin Physician:

'Rained all day today and more rain in the forecast everyday this week for Grays Harbor. AARGH! So much for any fish staging in the bay for the Sept 16 opener.

Silvers are pouring into the Aberdeen Lake hatchery, with credible reports of salmon pushing thru the Chehalis system in good numbers up into Wynoochee and Satsop. No doubt about it, the fish are on the move!

Of course with this year's regs, any salmon swimming upriver past the Chehalis Bridge in Aberdeen has a "get-out-of-jail-free" card thru October 1. By the time those fish are declared harvestable, they'll hardly be fit for cat food.

Talk about forgone harvest opportunity. With all the surplus hatchery salmon produced for this system ( both kings and silvers) it seems kind of silly that fish managers delay the bay opener til mid September and the river opener til October 1.

If we're not gonna be given maximum harvest opportunity on these abundant hatchery stocks, why produce them in the first place?'


Sorry Lofty if you think I am a jacka$$ for simply calling FPN on his claims and providing some real facts....

From what I can see and from the "credible" people I talk to who know how to fish Grays Harbor and have been doing so since opening day, it appears that FPN's assertion that the fish have already gone up the river and therefore WDFW screwed us again with foregone opportunity by opening the fishery too late, is just not correct. No ill will intended, just the facts.

The Grays Harbor Chinook fishery is not predominently of hatchery origin. This year we are lucky that the run size is big enough to support this real quality fishery.

The fishing has been better than average and there are more than plenty of quality fish available and that my "lofty" critic is a fact.