I guess I was looking to put myself in a not so good mood this morning, so I dredged up this thread from 18 months ago...and since then, things have gotten worse...and worser, yet.

First, the spring '08 season is not closed, but it is only opened until the middle of March.

As with some other management schemes, this one left me scratching head, for a few reasons...the main one being this:

If we have to close the river due to low escapement, why are we opening it all, in March?

Since it wasn't closed for low escapement, then why was it closed at the end of March at all?

It seems WDFW picked the only indefensible position to take...

Closing it for the season for conservation purposes makes sense.

Leaving it open because the conservation needs are being met makes sense.

Opening it for half the season makes no sense whatsoever, and can't be justified on any grounds.

Anyway...that one's old news, but it still grates at me.

Now...this past year.

Based on the escapements since '04, the forecast for the Skagit/Sauk system was high...something like 9000 fish. When I say "high", I only mean that in a relative sense, as 9000 fish of a run that historically may have had 60,000 fish is a pissant remnant...a run that supported directed harvests of nearly 30,000 wild steelhead per year not really all that long ago.

Anyway, that being said, 9000 is a lot of fish compared to what we've been getting...about 150% of the escapement goal, as a matter of fact.

For those of us who spend a lot of time on the Sauk and Skagit in March and April, it became abundantly clear very early on in the season that something was wrong...terribly wrong...there were very little fish numbers showing up.

OK...maybe they're just late...but by the end of April, they still hadn't really shown in anything at all like would have been expected at a forecasted run size of 5000, much less 9000...and by mid-May, it was clear by the spawner surveys that they weren't late...they just weren't coming.

I heard rumblings then of a revised post-season escapement of something more like 2000 fish, which was poo-poo'd by many...and now it's starting to look like those who said only 2000 were returning were spot on.

My memory might be fuzzy on this, but I'm pretty sure that historically we've been seeing something like 2/3 of the basin's fish making a right turn at Marblemount...but I'll be dollars to donuts that it's more like 80% or 90% are doing it now.

If that was because the Sauk population was exploding, at a faster rate than was the Skagit population, then I'd be OK with it...but it's not, as a matter of fact, the Sauk population is in the $hitter, and only looks good in comparison to the Skagit run, which would need a considerable increase to even be considered "in the $hitter".

The main spawning areas on the Skagit between Rockport and Marblemount are usually full of fish, and starting to get pretty peppered with redds, by the third week of April...not this year.

Empty.

I hate to keep coming back to SCL and dam operations, by the hydrology and biology of the Skagit has changed, and it's changed a lot...and at the same time the spawning population has crashed.

There is a tremendous growth of "river snot"...the algae Didymo...coating the bottom in most of the formerly productive spawning stretches. Not surprisingly, this crap is only found around here on rivers with dams on them...the Cowlitz, the Lewis, and the Skagit...and it's only been in profusion on the Skagit for a very short time.

This can't be good for anything, not redd production, not bug production...and it's kind of hard to have fish without both of those.

There are far, far less invertebrates growing in the Skagit, compared to the Sauk...an evening hatch on the Skagit might find you a bug or two, while even the Sauk is buried in bugs.

The dam is operated on river cycles to promote optimum energy production at optimum times...period.

Yeah, I know they are trying to protect all the fish in there (three stocks of which are recently added to the ESA rolls; Bull Trout, Chinook, and Steelhead), but we all know that at the very best it is an attempt to accomodate fish while producing as much power in the most financially efficient way, not the other way around.

Chums have nosedived in the Skagit, it hasn't even opened for pinks a few times in the past several years, and the steelhead fishery is all but a memory.

Breaks my heart.

Blaming it all on "marine conditions" is starting to sound more and more to me like "let's blame it on something we have no control over"...and I'd accept that, if we were at least also fixing the things we DO have control over...but we're not, even when we know exactly what it would take to recover those fish populations.

Our history proves that every time we choose to "manage" a basin, meaning use it to make money first, then fish as an afterthought, we end up spending far more money than we can ever make off the river just to try and hold on to remnants of wild runs that no one can fish for, anyway.

As I said in the other thread, the number one threat to fish recovery in the PNW, for any salmon or steelhead run, is the lack of political or institutional will to do exactly what we already know will help...

I also think that there are plenty out there who would love to see whatever will we have left be consumed by "just fcuk it"...

Fish on...

Todd