Wild steelhead are light years away from doing just fine. In case you haven’t noticed, rivers have not been closed to protect wild steelhead when they absolutely should have been.

You must be a former wdfw employee.

Yes. I remember the High Seas Driftnets was a topic of discussion back in the late 90's I think. Have not heard anything since. Wonder if any evidence of interception was ever found? I'm sure their are more nets out there now more than ever compared to then.

What's fine? I found some great water to fish even w/ the water up. Did you hook or land any? I did spot 2 in the lower river moving quickly. Nice big fish but failed to get them to take. I have always had trouble getting moving fish to bite very well and w/ as much water as was there, I think any fish around were racing to their dump spot. That's why I'm curious how the tribal meat hole produced or not. Might shed some light on numbers that should be there, but don't seem to be. Also wonder if Cook produced or not?

The truth is that there is no single reason our salmon and steelhead returns are tanking. Steelhead and salmon are supposed to spend anywhere from one to five years in their natal stream with the exception of pinks and chum. Side note is that these are the runs that have been doing better than the rest, until recently.

While in that stream the fry eat plankton and gradually move up to insects and other small invertebrates. I'm no scientist but if the fry have nothing to eat because our streams have become nutrient deserts, they are starting life out at a deficit. It might be interesting to see what lies under the rocks of our streams these days.

So in nature (question if this applies to hatchery fish) these fish remain in their natal streams up to five years for steelhead. So they're starving, does that force them to the estuaries early? From there it's a whole new game as it is a hostile environment of birds and a population of seals and sea lions that have exceeded that natural populations. So, question number one, are there any studies to see how many smolts actually survive this stage?

After that the smolts finally make to the salt. At that point I'll stop because that has become another toxic sludge of hazards lately. Food for though, think about the normally reliable runs of chum that failed to arrive this year. That should be a red flag for what might have happened to our other runs of salmon and steelhead.

I also remember the "high seas netting"....Japanese fishing fleets, nets 25 to 30 MILES in length....steelhead were part of the "by catch"....the years were way before the 90's......mid 70's, time goes by when your having fun.....It was a big deal, Coast Guard, air patrols, way off the Washington coast....it was stopped, at least at that time.

Must be that new Verizon 5G fumbling their GPS or maybe bigfoot poaching in the middle of the night....

That makes more sense. I remember struggling on the Puyallup in the mid to late 70's for fish. Then it turned around in the 80's, peaking in 84-85. Wonder if patrols had anything to do w/ that?

High seas drift nets were thought to be an issue in the mid-90s. Coast Guard and Sea Cops (privately funded patrol) found some, but it wasn't as big an issue as many thought. WDG/WDW looked into it and based on the available data estimated that high seas interceptions were responsible for a take of up to 3% of steelhead. But it's easier to blame a boogeyman like that than acknowledge that the ocean has become less productive, and that humans may have had something to do with it.

Fully 80% of steelhead smolts originating from Puget Sound streams NEVER make it to sea.

"LLTK and our partners are especially concerned with the low numbers of juvenile steelhead surviving their brief, two-week journey through the marine waters of Puget Sound on their way to the Pacific Ocean. Fewer than 20% are successfully making the trek!"

https://lltk.org/come-experience-fish-journey-like-no-survive-sound/

Among the smolts originating from the streams of Hood Canal, 50% die at the Hood Canal floating bridge ALONE!

https://lltk.org/project/hood-canal-bridge/

Unfortunately perfectly stated.

Not tricky to see end of days coming on all anadromous species in the very near future.

Fished the Salmon Sunday. Not in the tribal area. No fish. Saw 8 to 10 other guys. No fish caught or hooked by anyone. River was up but fishable.

We had two ripe hens and a nice sized male in the Dungeness adult pond this morning. The hens were just over 28" each and the buck was almost 30".

Bushbear, were scales taken?

I remember an interesting facet of the pink fishery in '79. Lots of fish, not enough for a harvest fishery, but many fly-flingers went out and fished "trout" and "steelhead" and released pinks. Some neat streamers designed by Garrett. I'd say that you hooked about 10 pink and hour. Plus, if you fished more than an hour it was likely that you'd hook a summer-run. Knew a number of folks this happened too.

Bushbear, how many steelhead in total back to the hatchery now?

Out of a release of how many?

thanks.

Brushbear, in addition to that info could you comment on years past where the run would currently be? How many fish you would have expected by now based on the past

NOAA - Fisheries is allowing the state to release 10,000 steelhead in the Dungeness. The 10K release started after an agreement was reached with WFC in 2016 - see link below. Total count as of yesterday was four fish. In the earlier part of this century, I can remember some returns of 30+ fish, but the past few years my memories are of generally less than 10-15 fish. Would need to dig into the records to see what the average is.

https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/wint...nal-watersheds/

Prior to the lawsuit release numbers were in the 25K+ range.

At one time, the Dungeness was one of the Top 10 steelhead rivers in the state. There has been a hatchery on the river for about 100 years. I saw a report from 1944 that said the hatchery had released 1.5 million spring Chinook, 180,000 steelhead, and 700,000 coho. We're back up to over 800K coho now. The Chinook returns are not good. The state has started up a new captive brood program. The last one ended in about 2000 with returns of around 1200 fish that year. The program ended and the run tanked.

Hopefully, we'll get something going again, but the funding for the Hurd Creek facility re-build/update isn't looking too good. The holding tanks need to be moved above the flood plain and the wells need to be protected. Any river flows above about 2000 cfs put the facility at risk. The river hit 1100 cfs yesterday. I've seen it at 7500 cfs and it isn't pretty. Normal flows for this week, historically, are about 300 cfs. In looking at the data for the past 10 years, to date, the flow has exceeded 2000 cfs 9 years and has gone over 3000 cfs in 6 different years.....so much for being in the "rain shadow". Sure would be nice for the legislature to fund the Hurd Creek project.

Just confirmed - scale samples were taken. Not sure when they'll be read. Hatchery guys are thinking the fish might be three salt. Will post the results when I can get them.

Funny isn't it, that the Makah's can dump 174000 into the Sooez river but federal rules limit the Dungeness to 10,000. They are putting more than that into the Sekiu river, which is off reservation and does not have any collection facility. Makes one wonder.

Yup

28 - 30" is about right for a 2-salt steelhead and a might small for 3-salt.

Sooez is classified as a coastal river, not PS, so not ESA listed. Hence no ESA influenced stocking restriction. Nor WFC lawsuit which pertained to PS rivers with ESA-listed steelhead and therefore in need of NMFS approved HGMPs.