Nooch may be the exception among the Chehalis tribs since it has summer steel available...

BUT...

For the most part, there are exceedingly few winter steel to be had until the last week of December. In the meantime, the system will be full of wild late coho... a species of conservation concern in 2015. The conservation concern for wild coho has been severe enough to warrant closing the entire system to not just salmon fishing but ALL fishing. Yes a handful of reaches in hatchery-producing tribs has bee re-opened for hatchery coho, but the rest of the basin remains closed at this time. The million dollar question is when to re-open for steel?

Looking at tribe gillnet data, when they start their so-called steelhead season, the encounter rate on steelhead is an order of magnitude less than late coho..... 10:1 with coho predominating.

It's not until the last week of December that it swings the other way 10:1 with steelhead predominating.

So if we want the QIN to suspend their fishery to lay low on wild late coho, the state has no choice but to do likewise.

The best indicator the state has for late coho is the late return to the Satsop hatchery at Bingham Creek. We don't really get a good feel for how well that late run is doing until the after the 3rd week in December. At that point WDFW can determine if the late coho run is of sufficient size to warrant additional H&R impacts from a rec fishery for steelhead.

If we're going to re-open, my advice would be to wait until at least Christmas to target steelhead in the Chehalis Basin. It's the intellectually honest thing to do.