I think I should add this. When working with native Chinook I was taught by agency staff that planning is everything. By planning I mean you have to be able to close the loop. The loop is brood, incubation, rearing, release, and brood to do it again. Each step has multiple issues that go with it from water quality to disease control. In the Willapa the only facility that can achieve this Forks Creek on the Willapa River. Totally remodeled and up to date it also has holding water for returning Chinook adults and can make a 5 million eggtake goal.

The Naselle on the other hand is in need of a total redo for over 10 million I am told. It suffers from warm summer water requiring Coho fry to be transferred to Nemah in order to make release numbers. Also in dry years ICH and other bugs ravage the returning to adults. Think of three generations or 15 years and say the Naselle has a failure two out of the five years in each five year cycle. After three cycles you end up with production being below anticipated two or three years of any five year cycle.

So in their wisdom WDFW proposes to close Folks Creek ( the only quality up to date facility capable to rear 5 million Chinook ) and Nemah. ( the most cost effective but needs maintenance ) Then use the most inadequate facility in Willapa ( Naselle ) to rear maximum production of Chinook.

Simply put this whole mess is about the rec vs commercial thing and to be honest before they get done WDFW will blow up the commercial fisheries just as they have done to the rec. Their is a simple solution to the rec / commercial thing in the North Bay but that is a different issue.

The Naselle - Willapa R hatchery thing just blows me away. Naselle has always been a substandard facitlity since the day it came on line, as I have been told. Forks Ck on Willapa R might not be the best hatchery in the WDFW inventory, but it is far and away the best in the Willapa region.

The ecology of Willapa tributaries is not optimally suited to natural Chinook production. This is the reason Chinook were the least abundant salmon in the basin historically, back in the pristine habitat days. The Willapa R doesn't have and never will have in the foreseeable future a naturally self-sustaining wild Chinook population of any significance. The Naselle may never do so either, but by nature of its stream channel morphology it is more likely than Willapa R. Meanwhile, Forks Ck is far and away better suited to culturing hatchery Chinook than is Naselle.

How can it not look like to any thinking person that WDFW has designed and proposes to further modify the Willapa policy to fail by every relevant metric?

This makes me want to go all out and UP THE REVOLUTION and DEFUND WDFW.

I'm with you Salmo. Needs to started over from the bottom up.

A couple of folks called and asked me about the rec vs commercial thing in the North end of the bay and asked that I line it out for all, so here goes. The problem revolves around WDFW putting in nets areas T & U all the way up the Willapa River for days . The end results where sweeping the bay and Willapa River clean leaving little for recs and just as the fish numbers built back up in goes the nets to sweep everything clean again which pretty much destroyed the rec season.

The solution is simple you put the commercial boundary in U near the airport. Let commercial fish say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday then off the water. The Recs would fish the remainder of the week and fish would also get above the new commercial boundary allowing for reasonably successful rec opportunity when the commercials fish their three days. The T fishery for recs and commercials is dependent on the new adults entering the bay so it is even on opportunity.

The thing is if the 5 million release was done at Forks Creek the number of fish available for both rec and commercial would be vastly greater than the ridiculous idea of using Naselle. Is this solution perfect for recs or commercials? Nope, nope, and nope but it would work.

WDFD created this mess between the recs and commercials when they created a upriver boundary that is absurd. It appears that the solution is to be get rid of hatcheries that are successful and spend millions on something that will likely fail both rec and commercial fishers. I am not sure what thought process was utilized for this fiasco but frankly if writing a review of their plans the words " not well thought out " would appear often. Being a farm boy I would use " stupid " but then I would be criticized for being unkind to the word stupid so I will not.

Back when I was involved in the management of Fraser sockeye the managers realized that a net fishery created a hole in the run. They worked very hard to craft fisheries is such a way that nobody fished in fishless hole. It can be done and I know that the WDFW bios/managers have seen it done. Guess it didn't stick.

My comments on the WB policy debacle. I encourage everyone to write the commission. Feel free to use any of the ideas here that you can.


Dear Commissioners and Director,

I am writing to provide feedback on the ongoing Willapa bay salmon policy development process. I have followed the policy development process and management of Willapa bay fisheries for over 20 years and served as a WB recreational advisor in the past. As a recreational angler for salmon, I view the process through the prism of angler opportunity and have advocated for a policy that maximizes economic benefits while achieving the Fish and Wildlife Commission’s stated conservation goals.
As written the Willapa bay Salmon policy for chinook is an abject failure for many reasons:
• It fails to optimize the economic benefits of limited natural origin chinook impacts.
• It lacks basis in biological reality with overly optimistic escapement goals for chinook.
• It is predicated on false assumptions about hatchery functionality.
• It was formulated in the absence of a critical habitat evaluation of the Naselle and Willapa Rivers.
• It fails to implement an actual recreational priority, but rather eliminates recreational fishing.
While the veneer of conservation language in the policy document might suggest to naïve readers that strong conservation goals have been set, it has been clear from the outset that they are unattainable and have little basis in biological reality. For example, the data used to formulate the policy was mostly derived from a time prior to mass marking of hatchery chinook in WB hatcheries. So for instance, the data to derive realistic escapement goals was lacking at the outset. Likewise, despite repeated advisor requests for comparative quantitative habitat analysis, primary stream and contributing stream designations were made in the absence of contemporary habitat considerations. Furthermore, coded wire tag data clearly showing that the recreational catch was mostly composed of hatchery origin Forks Creek hatchery fish was disregarded counter to the state objectives of the policy of having a recreational priority. Taken together this lack of science driven decision making necessitates a full reconsidering of stream designations and revision of the policy to meet the Commission’s stated objectives for Willapa bay chinook management.
The consideration of what a meaningful recreational priority for chinook management might look like is also important because historically, Willapa bay had long been the top small boat marine chinook fishing destination in a state with very few remaining attractive chinook fishing destinations. While the policy has been successful in mitigating gear conflict, which is an aspect of recreational priority, it has done so at the expense of maintaining the one key hatchery stock (Fork’s Creek) making up the majority of marine. Unfortunately, the Naselle hatchery cannot produce adequate chinook returns to support any fishery commercial or recreational. Further, as production has been eliminated at Fork’s Creek, marine angler success has plummeted. Some Willapa bay advisors suggest that the recreational fleet can simply move south in the bay to follow the fish, but the fewer fish returning there are largely inaccessible to the recreational fleet due to intense weeds, navigational hazards, swift currents, shoals, and long runs from primitive launches exposed to strong winds. Combined with a relative isolation from marine infrastructure (harbors, launches, emergency services) these hazards will contribute to significant risk to the typical small boat angler and will dramatically decrease the accessibility and safety of the fishery.
To conclude, it is clear that nothing short of a full re-write of the Willapa Bay chinook policy is needed. If a recreational priority is to be an important piece of that revision, the primary stream designation should be shifted back to the Naselle River, which has superior chinook habitat, and hatchery chinook production restored at the Forks Creek hatchery which has superior production capacity for chinook.