Anybody wanna hear the real story?

I will try and keep as cool as I can throughout this post, but I am warning you up front, this may get heated. Since Monday I have received hundreds of calls, made hundreds more, and have been told how and what I should be doing instead of what I am doing at the current time. With that being said, here ya go...

We have a tiering plan for both chinook and coho bound for Grays Harbor and the Humptulips. We have never finalized the plan, but the department is using it as the past 2 years frameworks for season setting in Grays Harbor.

Last year was a tier one chinook fishery and we should have never had a chinook retention in the bay, but for some reason the department figured differently. October 1st alone killed 350 chinook, and we were well on our way of blowing through our share of impacts in the first couple days.

We made numerous calls to the department asking for an emergency closure, but were told everything was going okay and we were going to run the rest of the retention season just the same. Luckily after the first couple days the fishing turned to crap and the catches dropped off dramaticly. We eneded up making ecscapement, somehow. Must have been hard to see all those chinook reds in November when the rivers were at flood stage the entire month.

This year Grays Harbor is supposed to see 15,501 Chehalis wild chinook, 194 Chehalis hatchery chinook, 4,614 Humptulips wild chinook, and 4,040 hatchery Humptulips chinook. Totaling 24,349 chinook. The goals are 12,364 wild chehalis chinook, 47 hatchery chehalis chinook, 2,236 wild humptulips chinook, and 369 humptulips hatchery chinook. That leaves 3,137 chehalis wild chinook available, 147 chehalis hatchery chinook available, 2,378 humptulips wild chinook available, and 3,671 humptulips hatchery chinook available.

Now divide all that by 2 and that gives you 4666 available non treaty chinook impacts. Since the wild chinook is the driver, were only really counting wild chinook, so really 2,684 available chinook for the sportsman, commercial gill netters and the Chehalis tribe. Since the Chehalis tribe only takes and handful of about 25 fish a year, they don't really count in this.

We are at a high tier 2 chinook run this year, so in our tiering plan the commercials must use their chinook impacts, as release mortalities from the live boxes and must fish selectively. So other than the release mortalities given to the commercials all retention impacts should go to the sportsman. WRONG! WTF?

Instead the department felt that the commercials needed a chinook directed fishery with only 2684 available chinook impacts. Our wording in the plan states that the commercials "Increase chinook impacts as needed to provide for a directed coho fishery without reducing tier 2 sports fisheries. WTF is taking out of our cookie jar and giving the commercials some of our share? Sounds like reducing to me.

This is still not final, and is going to get brutaly ugly the next couple of days I can guarantee you guys that! Now for the season the the department put fourth...

Marine area 2-2 Open October 1. Oct. 1 thru Oct 30 1 chinook may be retained in the daily bag limit. Nov. 1 and on, release all chinook.

Mainstem Chehalis to Porter bridge open October 1. Oct. 1 thru Oct 30 1 chinook may be retained in the daily bag limit. Nov 30 and on release all chinook.

All Chehalis tribs, open Oct 1. release all chinook.

Humptulips open Oct 1 thru Oct 15th coho retention only, release all chinook, no bait. October 16th thru November 30th 1 chinook may be retained in the daily bag limit. Bait allowed. Dec 1 closed for salmon completely!

These are not the season that we wanted, these were the seasons that the department and the commercials wanted. Beleive me when I say that we are not on board with this season! Lets hear from some of you hard core harbor guys, lets hear your oppinions...

Harbor Hog