Having managed to get sicker than my dog I have had little time ( or desire ) to track things but this bit below concerns the closure on the Hoh. I asked what was up and the response I received is below. My question was what was up with the Clearwater & Hoh seasons.

From WDF&W:

No changes to Clearwater that I’m aware of. I did a quick glance and didn’t see a change.

We are below escapement on the Hoh for spring chinook and made a decision to close. Data showed we only caught ~ 30 hatchery Chinook a year. Seemed like a pretty low harvest to incur impacts on the wild stock . We talked about that a couple of times at NOF. We are trying to keep the tribes to 6% harvest rate.




From another email response:

Greetings Mr. XXX,

Your interpretation of the new fishing regulations is not in error. For a number of recent years we have been experiencing lower than normal returns of Spring Chinook in the Hoh River (see graph below). This year the run was forecast down yet again. As a result, we chose to limit our impacts on this depressed stock by closing the sport fishery for retention of all Chinook during this time period. That being said, the summer steelhead fishery opens the first Saturday in June, June 7th.

I hope this clarifies the regulations for this season. If you have further questions or concerns, feel free to contact me.

Thank you for your time,
David


David Low
Fishery Biologist
Washington Dept. of Fish & Wildlife
Montesano, WA 98563
360-249-1216


Edited by Rivrguy (05/02/14 02:20 PM)
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Dazed and confused.............the fog is closing in