i have not bonked a native steelhead in the chehalis river system in over 25 years but because of the tribal netting schedule i have decided that the state is trying to wipe out steelhead in the chehalis system. the december steelhead of which there use to be a lot are gone. maybe it is time for the sportman to take back control of the river.
if there are any dept. of wildlife employees on this board could you give the why of the agree upon netting season for the tribe and the numbers used to justify it. i have emailed the state office and received on reply thanks

Good luck with that larryb

Could this be the "why" of the agreement?

Judge Boldt finally held that the government's promise to secure the fisheries for the tribes was central to the treaty-making process and that the tribes had an original right to the fish, which they extended to white settlers. It was not up to the state to tell the tribes how to manage something that had always belonged to them. Judge Boldt ordered the state to take action to limit fishing by non-Indians.

By Walt Crowley and David Wilma , February 23, 2003

Washington State ordered to practice discrimmination?

Prophetic

It's just not the same without the baby doll.

The Chehails gets weird in accounting because the Chehalis Tribe's "share" come out of the NI side. So, they could take half, the QIN could take half, and the sharing requirements are met. And, because fish management is an exact science, the necessary escapement is also on the grounds.

Our share of the Chinook in the Chehalis is zero. How does 2% come out of zero and still be 2%? Figures don't lie but liars figure. Go figure. And who monitors the 2%?

The NI "share" is supposed to 50% but it is over all WA waters. You took them in the bay and ocean. The only species where in-river sharing is 50:50 would be steelhead as there aren't, or weren't, in intercepting fisheries.

WDFW is the Grinch that stole steelhead from fishing past.
Now they sit collecting a pension and still eating doughnuts.

Scapegoating wdfw for something that we all played a part in the demise of is the height of stupidly on this board...like none of us live where we live and have anything to do with it along with all the other declines.
To say that you have a narrow viewpoint on that is a bold understatement. It'd be nicer if people put their adult hats on, educated themselves and started having convos of worth. Rather than the 5th grade bull we get like here and spewing out of Camerons c holster.

Spoken like a true Government servant with zero accountability.

WDFW is nothing but a group of unionized weatherman.

Our state has failed their own mission statement.

Simply pathetic.

There is no better sight on a river.

I'd like a few concrete examples of failure of the Mission Statement. First, what exactly does it say?

We know that WDFW has some influence, but not control, of the harvest of the anadromous species. So, how can they control AK, BC, or the Tribes with Treaty guaranteed rights versus privledges?

How can they control the addition of all those new residents, both by immigration and birth, that make increased demands on natural resources?

How can they, as a state agency, change Federal Law?

Just wondering. There are many ways that I see they have not performed as well as I think they could or should, but they are not functioning in a vacuum and we (the collective we of society) support the increased growth, decreased habitat, ESA, wolves, and so on. One of our (the consumptive users of fish and wildlife) shortcomings is that our view of resources is a minority view.

Why?
Most here would just argue the point and try to justify their failures as they point at others.

The government is one of the very few places you can work and have failure be justified.

Having no species to manage and being buried in debt has long ago become the norm.

On the Swing,

Scapegoatimg WDFW? I think the people who mis-managed the steelhead program should be held accountable! For more than thirty years knowledgeable anglers sounded the alarm about too many wild fish being taken and hatchery programs being cut. I was one of those yelling the loudest. Steelhead management was not forthcoming, and basically dishonest, in their silence to the Commission after the merger, either. Meetings of the so called "Steelhead Advisory Committee" were whitewash jobs to the members, and the WDFW staff buried their collective heads in the sand. And now those of us who love the fish, and volunteered at every level, complied with the regulations whether they made sense or not, are left with what? The history of weakening steelhead runs goes back more than ten years! When I hear about "ten year average" references to salmon and steelhead returns I realize how ignorant the staff is.

Simple questions like "What is the carrying capacity of this watershed"
are never addressed. An entire ecosystem is damaged when fish runs decline or disappear. WDFW staff has tunnel vision when it comes to thinking outside their own program. The legacy of the steelhead management staff will be etched in stone as "Disgraceful".

Amen.

I agree with Tug that we should be using a lot more of the available data; it just makes managers look bad.

As to carrying capacity, it isn't fixed. Here's and example from AK. They fish wild coho at 60 % and the runs, at least over a couple decades up to about 2010 were stable. The annual harvest varied from 1,000 to 8,000. The difference? At the low end there were no Pink Salmon spawning in the stream. At the high end there were 2+ kg per square metre. Carrying capacity for coho varied with the amount of coho spawning and at all levels was "sustainable". So, what CC does one manage for? Coho, and let the Pinks spawn and feed the coho and bears? Or Pink harvest, and have fewer bears and fewer coho. But, since it was different fishing groups chasing the salmon, there was a nice annual conflict.

CM,

Your comment makes perfect sense to me about carrying capacity dependent upon available nutrients. About twenty years ago Gary Loomis demonstrated the value of nutrients in a stream to the natural rearing of juvenile coho. Although I don't agree with his numbers, his example opened some eyes. Then also, the Vancouver Island stream (Keough?) experiment fascinated me in its success by adding nutrients to streams and the boom in steelhead survival. Now we've painted ourselves into a corner, by eliminating many salmon from spawning in the streams because they are of hatchery origin and need to be segregated from wild ones. So, the wild ones now lack a source of nutrients available to them. Meanwhile with fewer and fewer wild spawners the gene pool gets narrower and narrower.

The Keogh was fascinating because the nurtients were an on-off switch. Use them, production jumped. Budget cuts? It dropped. Then, the pink run up there boomed and natural spawners, for a while, replaced the fertilizers. We have seen the same thing in WA when the pinks boomed on some streams. Also, in some streams with good chum runs.

And, too put the Keogh into carcass currency, they were loading it only in the range of 0.6 kg/square metre. There was a long ways to go (like 3X the loading) to hit the inflection point.

I think when we have discussed "habitat" in the past, as vast as it is, we have still under-measured what it entails...MDN is huge, and the pretend "too many spawners is bad for the river" argument took a chunk out of that necessary component.

Overharvest of forage fish is an "ocean conditions/habitat" issue...if the fish can't eat, they can't grow.

We have no problem noting that landslides, sea walls, dams and diversions, dikes, destruction of beaver ponds, and bad culverts block habitat...I would suggest that a fishing net (whether it be an in-river gillnet, an estuary gillnet, an open water seine or drift net) sure as hell blocks fish from accessing available habitat, too.

Hatchery fish taking up usable spawning grounds is a habitat issue.

Those are all in addition to unchecked growth and actual destruction of the rivers, estuaries, and forests the fish all depend on.

It's part of why I never liked the "4 H's" approach...it purposely misses the interactions betwen the Hs...it's all one H.

Fish on...

Todd

Years back CM was helping the local volunteers to utilize hatchery carcasses for nutrients. So he set down and did the math for us and it came out if you took every hatchery carcass in the state and put them in the Chehalis Basin it would not equal what the Chehalis Basin had naturally for nutrients presettler and harvest. Habitat is more than just gravel and woody debris it is about the functioning of habitat.