Folks your crossing between two different time frames & fish. The first three weeks of Dec have very few Steelhead and is a Rec Late Coho fishery. The QIN Steelhead starts Dec 1st and few Steelhead are present in the MAINSTEM river and is really a targeted Late Coho fishery called a Steelhead fishery. The Dec 1st thing for the QIN came from old Dept. Game season setting ( & courts ) and is just ignored as to relevance to the present. So we are down now for the NORMAL timed Coho which ends the last week of Nov.

The first question is why are the REC continuing to be down if two tribes are fishing the first three weeks of Dec? The second issue of the REC Steelhead season piggybacks in Dec but is a stand alone issue from Christmas forward. The two seasons overlap but differently depending on if your tribal or REC on what the target fish is.

R-6 has a conference call with the Advisers Monday so we will know more. They tried to get one going this past week but were late getting to it so it was reboot time. So we are down running on the 33.3 % of forecast with few NORMAL timed Coho available after both tribal & Non Tribal commercial fisheries. Now the thing is that preliminary data on spawners in Willapa came back at 41% of forecast so is the Chehalis showing the same? I do not know but you can bet your butt I am going to ask. It makes a big difference because if it is adjusted upwards then the question is why and the hell is the river down now? The normal timed stock is to the gravel and it is Late Coho time and the tribes appear to not see a conservation issue.

Just so all know I advocated a one fish bag around a restructured inriver Rec season prior to closure but when the QIN pulled agreed to support the closure. Again that was NORMAL timed Coho. If the QIN and Chehalis tribes are going fishing ( which essentially says there is not a conservation issue ) then the inland communities need to get what is left of their seasons back and right damn now!