https://pnwbestlife.com/chehalis-river-winter-steelhead.../
#steelhead #fishing #pnwbestlife


found this on face book.. hope it opens.

If anyone thinks 70 wild steelhead were caught in an entire year of fishing on the chehalis they're not holding all the cards. The last year we could fish but not from boats we floated the satsop and landed a dozen or so wild fish in the float. No doubt they get under reported because no one is tagging wild steelhead on the catch card. the only way it makes it on there is by a fish checker that is NEVER there.

Yeah I was curious where the author of this got his impact numbers.

This thread represents one of the major problems faced by a manager. Data. All of our catch data quality rests on the honesty of the catcher. Where it was caught, when it was caught, H or W, and so om. If fish, or any other resource, are mis/non reported there is little that the manager can do about it.

Sure, if you don't report accurately you take more (in the short term), you can get your "share", and so on. Short-term gains. It also means that all those models that are so regularly bashed here are populated with poor information.

And, as a disclaimer, in my years of managing I was aware of issues within all user groups; they all did/do it.

CM, I think a lot of rec fishermen are "between a rock and a hard place" when it comes to reporting catching wild steelhead. If they are catching and releasing wild fish and reporting them then WDFW will assume a certain amount of mortality of these fish. if the recs do not report catching wild fish (if they catch them) then WDFW will say that the wild run is low. Whether they report catching wild fish or not they think they are cutting their own throats and their fishing opportunities are cut or reduced. Just a thought.

And the reel reason for these reported inaccuracies ? - The folks that were required to report / punch catches , did not in fact trust what the management required catch data would be used for. And in actuality, they may have been right in their miss trust.....

12/13/2022

QIN catch on the Chehalis, wish the total steelhead would include number of hatchery and wild.......that should be a requirement!!!!!!

I'm tired of hearing "a fish is a fish" on tribal side and on sports side its "release all wild steelhead" grrrrrrrrr

Did nit trust what, specifically? The manager was required to meet the spawning objectives and catch division. How does having poorer numbers advance this?

I know that the level of trust was low. I knew fish checkers who were asked how many fish they had checked that day. When told, the questioner said "no, you haven't".

Suspicion and or uncertainty about hatchery vs wild encounters obtained from creel interviews is likely a key reason behind hiring of "fish catchers" by the State. Of course, there are those that won't believe the fish catchers data either; the State just makes all the numbers up to screw the sportsmen.

Just to add some clarity since I'm the author of the linked page:

1. The numbers all come from the WDFW report titled "Stock Status and Harvest Management Plan For Steelhead Returning to the Chehalis River In the Winter of 2021-22"

2. It's not clear to me whether wild caught from sport fisherman is caught / kept vs encountered...I assumed in the article that these "wild caught steelhead" were illegally bonked fish not "encounters" as that would seem an impossible number as some have pointed out here.

3. The hypothetical December lower only scenario in the article uses estimated run sizes between hatchery and wild fish, and hatchery catch data to estimate "encounters". Because these are in-basin hatchery stocks and return timing is assumed to be the same, over time the ratio of encounters should match the ratio of run size...and we know the amount of hatchery steelhead caught, so it's a simple cross-multiply operation to get the number of wild encounters...

Hope this adds clarity. Thanks for the feedback on the article!

We (WDFW) actually know that even for in-basin stocks that hatchery fish released as age-1 smolts return before the wild fish that smolts as age-2. Well, in truth, what they have is the actual data; whether it has been examined and analyzed or not is the question.

Direct quote from the WDFW report I'm citing is "The combined hatchery stock run timing is currently similar to wild stock."

If hatchery steelhead return earlier it makes the adopted regulations even more indefensible.

I'm trying to be as fair and accurate to the WDFW as I can, and I'm assuming they would want that report to speak for their position on run timing...

"similar" Needs better definition. The earliness depended on stock and I would need to look. But, since the don't have (to my knowledge) a site in the watershed where they trap 100% of the steelhead that return, where they age 100% of the steelhead that return I don't believe they can say diddle e squat about timing. This difference in age vs return timing has been known since Waddell Creek in CA.

Which is fine...I'm not a biologist (though a bio has reviewed my assumptions). I'm happy to use WDFW's assumptions. It doesn't change the narrative or the open questions that remain...