What's wrong with Muck Creek? Seems at on time, study's and preservation plans were in order.
https://yosemite.epa.gov/oa/eab_web_docket.nsf/Attachments%20By%20ParentFilingId/4A6FBF55AC3670C085257C6200537646/$FILE/Att%209%20%20Muck%20Creek%20Basin%20Plan.pdf

My understanding it that it now goes intermittent in summer, is choked with weeds (Reed Canary Grass?) and is simply no longer steelhead habitat. If it flows in the winter it may still serve chum.

As I posted, whatever the limiting factors are, and that includes corresponding salmon escapements, most Puget Sound and coastal rivers are presently producing wild steelhead at their current carrying capacities. Harvest hasn't been a limiting factor for years now.

Muck Creek certainly added to the Nisqually's steelhead (and coho and chum salmon) production base. Even without it, the mainstem Nisqually and Mashel Rivers contain a lot of good to high quality steelhead habitat. The problem for steelhead appears to be the heavily increased marine mammal (harbor seals and sea lions) predation on smolts in the estuary and throughout Puget Sound. With the Nisqually being at the southern extreme of PS, the predation rate on smolts is higher than for any other PS river system. Tagging studies indicate that fewer than 20% of Nisqually steelhead smolts survive past Point-No-Point. Couple that with the low ocean survival rates for steelhead since 1990 and you have a nearly perfect storm of very low adult steelhead returns even with good freshwater habitat and no significant fishing harvest.

In Lk WA primary productivity and zooplankton density decreased drastically after King County approved METRO in 1968 and stopped sending untreated sewage into the lake. And since that time the number and species of salmonid predators has drastically increased in the lake and below the Ballard Locks. There are a lot of factors limiting Lk WA sockeye production. However, the sockeye population is at the present day carrying capacity, given all those factors. And it can't make its escapement goal because the escapement goal is not tied to the ecology and productivity of the population.

Hey, don't take it personally. It's just that in RichG's case, his perspective and view of how the ecological world works is so ding bat fvckin' crazy that no intelligent conversation is possible. I shouldn't even try.

I agree with the idea to minimize the allowed impact in the feeding grounds.
Contemporary conditions are man made. This years' chum run shows that reduced impact.

We need to find a way out of the numbers games played. Have the more fecund fishes return and spawn in home waters.

Reduce man made impacts in the estuary. Cormorants, pinnipeds, and terns all have increased by the way we have altered the habitat.

Salmo, try not to disparage stupid people. While it is easy and sometimes entertaining, they outnumber smart people by a good measure, and the world needs them to vote for smart things which benefit humanity, the natural environment and the living things with which we share the planet, or else we'll only get stupid things that run contrary to those goals. Examples abound,
fb

But, yet you did!

What does that say about you?

I would like the mods to check and see if Salmo and Rich are actually posting from the same IP.