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In the long term, we lost the farm. No forks creek production will mean no decent fishing east of tokeland for chinook, which is where the marine rec fleet catches most of its fish. Kiss good fishing just downstream of southbend goodbye. Also forget about any willapa river chinook fishing.


Well frankly you missed the boat on that one. The Recs never had access to the full Forks Cr production. At best after Commercial the Rec may have had access to adults produced at maybe 40%. That would be around the adults from 560K smolt. The new production of 300k is lower than necessary by about 50k AND if they got the PNOB up they could get it to around 600k to 650k. Then no loss in real terms as the nets are out to September 16th. Bulk hatchery production can but seldom is completely beneficial to Rec fishers as the impacts of the Commercial harvest drastically reduce access to returning adults & catch.

Now if ones problem is with hatchery reform then no one can help you much. The days of old are gone with just produce fish at a hatchery and damn the consequences. The fundamental issue with the Willapa hatchery complex is that Chinook production should not have reached the level it is. The baseline natural spawner population was way to small to avoid wiping out the gravel with commercial harvest. Then we have the straying of the Forks Creek Chinook production is about 20% of the returning adults AFTER harvest which resulted in 2 / 4 / 5 to 1 hatchery over natural in the gravel. Couple this with little natural brood in the hatchery egg take you end up with what we have.



Edited by Rivrguy (06/16/15 06:49 AM)
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Dazed and confused.............the fog is closing in