Originally Posted By: thefishnfool
Originally Posted By: gilly
I saw it, A monster for sure, the guy was holding it up for us to see. He caught it swinging his spey rod from the bank, unguided. I am sure he will regret killing this fish, but it is legal. I think this 1 wild fish per year has created a trophy bonking mentality. It is common in these waters to hear people talking about saving their punch card for a trophy. I saw a 19 and a 22 lb wild fish bonked the day before the 30 was harvested, and have heard of several in the 20-25 lb range bonked in the past month.

The fish stomping was out of control yesterday down at the mouth of the Hoh. A fish checker told me they had about 15-20 fish trying to come up the riffle below Barlows, and about 10 guys were chasing the fish back down into the hole so they could "catch" them.

Matt


Todd or others involved in politics.......

This is a concern that I too have had about a lot of different fisheries. Put a severe limit on retention and all of a sudden the only fish that are being killed are the ones that need to spawn the most. Knowing what is known about genetics and how quick genetic populations can change with severe selection pressures (ie......not keeping as many fish but only the big ones), what would be the possibility of getting a max size limit put on these fisheries say @ 35" or something like that. In our current state of negotiations with the tribes and forgone oppertunity, we wouldn't be giving up numbers so they wouldn't be able to increase netting pressure. All it would do is somewhat protect the larger genetics in the system that are probably the easiest to bread out of a pop. since it is overall a smaller part of the overall population. Any thoughts or concerns with this that I am not seeing???

Tim


Anyone??? Or are we more interested in biaatching about a fish that is already dead instead of what could be done to fix the problem?

Tim


Edited by thefishnfool (02/23/09 03:47 PM)
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