Well we've tried this one before, but let's have at it again. First, my personal disclaimer: I don't support regulations allowing harvest of wild native steelhead in Washington State. I'm just trying to explain how WDFW comes up with their position.

WDFW is charged with the responsibility of preserving, protecting, and perpeptuating the food and game fish resources of the state. However, they are similarly charged with managing those fish resources for the beneficial use of our state's citizens. This stuff is in the state RCWs (Revised Code of Washington) and WACs (Washington Administrative Code).

For the majority of our citizens that still means catching a fish, killing it, and retaining it for personal use or in the case of commercial fisheries, selling it. Most of the citizens of Washington do not fish for steelhead (I know, it just seems that way when you show up on your favorite river on Saturday morning), so it is not intuitive to most people that C&R is the best, or even a good, way to manage declining steelhead resources. And then, within the steelheading fraternity there are those who passionately believe that if a steelhead run cannot support a kill fishery, then it should be closed to all fishing. Period. End of discussion. No amount of factual information will disuade them of their position. This is what is known as a visceral belief. It's like religion or abortion, where the person's opinion is an article of faith, so debating it is a waste of time.

Yet, WDFW has a responsibility to anglers of that persuasion, just as they have a responsibility to those of us who believe that C&R is the management salvation of recreational steelhead fishing when the runs can no longer support the generous harvests they did when the runs were large and the angling public were few. Now, I'm not saying it's right, but WDFW's fish management section believe's that fishing for personal consumption is on the same high moral ground as C&R, so long as the steehead population is meeting it's spawning escapement goal. The department asserts that most of the coastal rivers do meet their spawning escapement goals, and therefore steelhead in excess of that number are surplus to spawning escapement needs and therefore are available for harvest. Ergo, the notion that the Quillayute and Hoh systems yield run sizes 3 times larger than their escapement requirements, so recreational harvest limits should be increased.

Now, you all remember the escapement goal and harvest discussion from last year, right? Just in case, here's a brief summary. Coastal river Z gets a run of 9,000 steelhead every year, on average. (Average is important; this whole thing is based on averages.) But River Z, like all rivers, in fact any environment - aquatic or terrestrial - has a finite carrying capacity. For river Z it is 9,000 steelhead. But because river Z has its headwaters in the protection of Olympic National Park, the habitat is of good enough quality that only 3,000 spawners are necessary, on average, to fully seed that entire river basin with little steelhead fry to produce the maximum number of steelhead smolts that river Z can possibly produce, on average. So according to WDFW's statistics, there are 6,000 harvestable steelhead every year, on average, in the river Z. Well the treaty Indians take what they can. And the sport anglers take a few. But it rains a lot on the coast and the river is out of shape a lot, so many more fish are making it to the spawning grounds than the 3,000, on average. But the run size still doesn't go above 9,000, on average. Because that's the damn carrying capacity (or the smolts that produce the 9,000) of the river Z. So more spawners aren't going to make for a run size greater than 9,000, on average. So WDFW determines that they could liberalize the sport harvest regulations and still meet the 3,000 escapement goal, and maybe get the sport harvest a little closer to a 50% share with the treaty Indians. (Don't kid yourself. This is a very big deal for certain individuals. Some people absolutely are near having heart attacks over the fact that treaty Indians are taking over 50% of the steelhead harvest. Even moreso when there are OBVIOUSLY more harvestable steelhead out there, but the sporties just aren't catching them.)

So what's WDFW to do? Their fisheries model, that they and the tribes are pledged to use - MSY, MSH (maximum sustained yield and maximum sustained harvest) tells them that there are harvestable steelhead out there. How can they tell those anglers who believe and demand (like it's their God given right, which it isn't, but that's another story) to catch and kill fish, that they shouldn't.

Time for a brief aside: MSY and MSH have been used to manage commercial fisheries all over the globe. With a couple of exceptions, that management model has led to the collapse of every fishery that used it. No kidding. MSY has a horrible track record. Yet professional managers seem wedded to it. I guess because it looks so good in theory. That's the beauty of math. It works. The model, unfortunately, hasn't. Except in a couple cases.

So here we have our state and tribal resource managers believing in a model that fails to deliver. And certain coastal steelhead populations are relatively healthy, especially compared to the rest of the state's steelhead populations. I guess since government, like public education, plays to the least common denominator, it is more important to bring the remaining healthy steelhead runs into the mediocre, or worse, status shared by the other steelhead runs.

It does puzzle me that WDFW doesn't take a leadership role in public education. We have some very good steelhead runs among many mediocre ones. We could acknowledge that there is a known, and high - according to history - risk of overharvesting steelhead by hanging on to the MSY model. We could declare that it is in the public interest to conserve these runs at the highest level possilbe, with a management goal of Maximum Sustained Recreation, which requires a much higher escapement goal than MSY. MSR requires C&R, the fishery management policy than minimizes human mortality to fish.

But there is a problem here. If WDFW admits that MSY is a risk to this steelhead population, then it might be a risk to any other fishery that is also managed according to it. Wow! Talk about subverting the prevailing management paradigm! Better to fish stocks to extinction than to admit we are using a model that is wrong. Oh, but that model will fish them nearly to extinction. Yeah. Well, mission accomplished. How about a gold watch and a golden parachute?

Sorry for the tangents, friends. But you get the idea. To admit that one is wrong takes courage. Better to just let the resource die. As long as it's on someone else's watch.

My point: if you believe the state of Washington should not target kill fisheries on wild native steelhead, just keep on telling the fish and wildlife commission so. It doesn't have to be the best, only, or right way to manage. It just needs to become the prevailing public thought. And some day, our children or grandchildren will thank us for our efforts.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.