Registered: 03/03/09
Posts: 4504
Loc: Somewhere on the planet,I hope
Well as the dust settles on the closure I thought I should put out what the last view of the river looked like. Prior & during the last NT Commercial days the harvest numbers said lots of Chum but one did not see that up past Cosy. Then Wednesday it ramped up and by Thursday & Friday it was a huge movement. Coming back up river one day I hit 4 / 5 Sea Lions and to many seals to count in a school that went from Blue Slough to nearly South Monte. The folks fishing upstream had Coho, Chinook & Chum all at once. This is not unusual as the old broodstocking saying was the Chinook hens will come with the Chum no matter what and appears to have held true. By Sunday it was way back down but Chum were still moving be it in smaller numbers.
So don't think all is good as it is not but we wait and see from this point what the Coho do. You can hit this link for the projected flows and rainfall http://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/rfc/ and in the next 10 days Olympic side is only 3.89 in. 1.89 on the upper Chehalis side and other than a little spike we hover between near record low flows and well below average flows for this point in time. Not much to move any Coho much if there are any to move so we wait. I doubt on the Chehalis side that many will move past Porter though just not enough water. So despite the media blitz that drought is over that is not the case in the Chehalis. Each day the flows stay low the situation gets worse and if the flows do not get up the fish will spawn short of where they should. This can result in redds being blown out by high water or not just depends on what mother nature does.
Without harvest numbers the agency is pretty much blind as to what is going on outside the hatchery returns so watch the hatchery returns at Bingham & the Hump for a idea. That said this is the first time in years a Chum run has come in without being blown apart by commercial harvest so go to the rivers and watch the fish. It is fascinating to watch these guys stage up and the Chum go into spawning mode. I think the Nooch & Satsop are the easiest to get access to watch.
Edited by Rivrguy (10/26/1504:48 AM)
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Dazed and confused.............the fog is closing in