Originally Posted By: AuntyM
 Originally Posted By: milt roe
Hood Canal streams come right out of ONP too. Where are those fish?


We've already established that on the Hood Canal streams, it's NOT the habitat. The Skok is seemingly able to produce wild steelhead better than the others, but it's also the one with the worst habitat.

I don't know how it can be explained, but I suspect predator concentrations including human poachers had something to do with helping the HC steelhead listings along. I don't think the tribes ever had a fishery directed at the upper HC wild steelhead.

It would appear that HC may have a higher concentration of illegal fishing and shellfishing than I once thought though, as I learn more about what enforcement is encountering.



So lets say this now, netting *has* been an issue in the past. And in no uncertain terms if netting isn't managed properly, it can be a problem in the future. BUT the PS rivers in question Puyallup, Green, Sky, Sno, Nisqually have seen *very* little netting pressure for quite some time.

There are lots of ideas on why the HC rivers haven't recovered. Some of them include lower river productivity having to do a lot to do with it. The rivers are *very* short and are very cold for long periods of time. Because of this, there has (from what I've been told) limited sized runs on those rivers, meaning that for a river of that specific volume the numbers of fish would be smaller than those on say the OP of a similar size. It's not to say there were lots of fish, but to say it would be a percentage smaller than the "idealized" steelhead stream.

Some other ideas have to do with poaching/harvest on those rivers. I'm not sure what the current regs are on those rivers, but it's amazing how few folks know what 12" or 14" inch fish look like.

Finally and this is the most controversial idea I've heard. The idea is that the HC rivers were actually netted and fished so hard for so long that there populations feel below some critical threshold. T Quinns book goes into detail on this, but for Salmon and Steelhead the populations are amazingly resilient to loss. It has to be that way cause our fish had to deal with volcanos, huge floods, earthquakes, etc. Because of this natural resiliance you can continue to loose fish until you hit a tipping point. After that, populations crash and have a hard time recovering. If it gets too low, then there is the possibility of them never quite recovering.

The past is the past and the HC rivers and if the populations have crash due to netting, it's a moot point. We need to learn from those lessons and manage how it's done.

But even this is just a hypothosis, and the biologists from what I know are kinda in a quandry. Without further study not a whole lot can be said for certain. Perhaps the listing can help by dedicating resources to a fish that didn't have the same commercial appeal as salmon.

Personally if there are bio's on this board that have more insight, I'd love to see it....