When a single stock in a very mixed stock fishery context is the one that is really limiting all the other fisheries, there are only two choices...ignore that stock, and write it off, or recover that stock, and then reap the benefits of it.

State and Federal law don't allow for choice number one, so we're stuck with choice number two. To gain a meaningful increase in any fishery limited by Stilly stock Chinook, Stilly stock Chinook numbers must be meaningfully increased.

Ending all the commercial fisheries that catch any of those fish will add only a handful of fish to the equation, and with the severely degraded habitat in the Stilly basin, it wouldn't matter anyway...the productivity of that basin has been so damaged that it probably can't even support spawning and rearing of a modest increase of fish.

That being the case, we're in a holding pattern on those fish...at best, they will remain exactly at replacement levels, and will continue to limit all the other fisheries...sport, commercial, and tribal...that catch any of them in Washington waters.

Unless the habitat is improved, that's how it will be until they are finally deemed functionally extinct (i.e., "written off"), and then the rest of the fisheries can go on their merry way...assuming another stock hasn't stepped into the spotlight as the next "about to go extinct PS Chinook run" and limit the fisheries.

If any group wants to have a positive effect on increasing PS sportfisheries by increasing Stilly Chinook numbers, then that group will have to play a positive role in increasing functional spawning and rearing habitat in the Stillaguamish Basin.

Period.

That starts by successfully opposing current and future threats to existing functional habitat, and while that is being handled get to work supporting a basin-wide project to stabilize the slopes that were almost completely destroyed by poor logging practices in the past, and fix the dozens of culverts that carry spawning tribs under Highway 530, and other roads.

From what I understand (Curt and Steve?), the Stillaguamish River has historically had a lot of its productivity wrapped up in beaver ponds in the lower river...those ponds are gone now, along with their productivity. Re-establishment of off-channel rearing habitat like beaver ponds would go a long way towards getting some rearing habitat back in shape there.

There's this other group out there that could help...they're called "beavers"...but while what they do is good for fish, it also floods peoples' backyards and driveways...people tend to not like that.

Removing miles of dikes out of the lower Stilly below I-5 would help, too...fully diked rivers like the Stilly, the Puyallup, they really have a hard time supporting rearing habitat.

Harping on harvest won't do any good on the Stilly...even if it were all stopped and a couple hundred more fish returned, they would have a hard time finding room to spawn, and their young would have an even harder time finding somewhere to grow up to smolt size successfully...and then they'd have no room to spawn when they returned in a few years.

Fish on...

Todd