They scheduled a little extra time for this meeting, and it ended early.

It was a good meeting and there was a good deal of agreement on most subjects, there were a couple of people that couldn’t, or wouldn’t understand how the agreement with the tribes works, and still think they should be allowed to harvest an equal number of fish. The fish are split between the two groups by opportunity, not harvest, although the tribes do get their 50% counted in the net, ours is counted by numbers in the lake (and harvested in the river). Whether you agree with it or not, it’s the rules we need to live with, and it’s not going to change anytime soon no matter how people “feel” about it. These people became angry at times about how the split is determined. This discussion took up a great deal of time and went nowhere.

One group asked for a 30% buffer in the escapement number, which seems good, but it may complicate many other fisheries if something like this is proposed. If this would become more common it could shut down many fisheries in other locations, so WDFW was reluctant to go in that direction. They do agree to shoot for a low return estimate though.

The returns have varied from less than 2% to around 25%, so predicting the next run from smolt output can be sketchy, this further complicates predicting the return. WDFW continued to remind people that Sockeye returns are harder to predict and vary far more than other types of salmon, so there WILL be more inequities in the split in the future. When they over estimate the number the tribes may benefit, when they under estimate the sportsman may, so don’t expect it to be close all the time.

There were several discussions on the river/lake harvest split. What was finally agreed upon was a river season starting June 16th and not ending until the quota of 20% of the sportsman’s share is caught. This season may also be limited by funds to monitor it, plus ESA impacts. Locations and times to fish will need to be looked at to limit tribal and sportsman encounters.
Below a certain number of fish they may not allow a river season.

One concern about this unique fishery is that this run consists of a very high % of biters, which is uncommon. The current lake harvest method helps to ensure this continues by taking brood stock before any hook and line fishing weeds out those biters and only allows non biting fish to spawn. Having too many fish harvested by sportsman in the river could lead to poor catch rates in the lake and declining harvest numbers even if more fish are placed in the lake.

Retention limits will vary depending on return forecast, lower than 30,000 =2, up to 45,000 =3, up to 60,000 =4, over 60,000 =6. This can be changed at any time because it only needs the consent of the sportsman, WDFW wasn’t that concerned about the limits because we need to harvest as many as possible.

They will try for opening on July 1 for the lake, the only concern is the 4th of July camping at the lake, the Park Service doesn’t want to deal with complications from overcrowding. Some were also concerned that people may become discouraged because currently there are very few or no fish in the lake on July 1, but if the run increases as they predict there may be fishable numbers at that time in the future. The idea was to set a date so people didn’t need to wait until the regs came out every year before reserving a camp site. People can decide for themselves if they want to fish early, and they will be instructed to check the fish counts in the lake before going if the goal is to only catch fish. Some people just want to camp in a less crowded part of the season and still have the opportunity to fish, even if fishing is poor.

These things aren’t set in stone, and WDFW said they would inform concerned people (groups) of what their planned approach was going to be when negotiations start with the tribe. This would be presented at the NOF meeting in Mill Creek. Some groups were very concerned that WDFW would not seriously take these matters up with the tribes during negotiations and we would end up with something totally different than what had been discussed at NOF meetings.

I probably left out many things, so others that attended can fill in more details or correct anything I got wrong.