YOU are getting screwed and you don't even know it yet! Please read the new Cowlitz River Fisheries and Hatchery Management plan (FHMP)
http://www.ci.tacoma.wa.us/Power/parks/cowlitz/relicensing/FHMP_Draft_1_05_%202004.pdf

If this board wants to see how a laymen like me, can go head to head with professional bureaucrats who chose to defend this screwed up Plan, this may be one of the best threads this board has ever seen!

Do you like to bring a fish home for dinner once in a while? Do you like to catch steelhead in October through February, or catch hatchery sea run cutthroat on the Cowlitz? Do you like to take a hatchery fish home once and a while, maybe to eat, i.e. coho, steelhead, or a cutthroat?

Do you like to catch lots of "hatchery" fish, like the big runs of coho, that the Cowlitz has always experienced? Do you want to continue to catch early winter run hatchery steelhead on the Cowlitz? Do you want special environment interest groups like American Rivers (AR) or Yakama National or other special interest groups like Trout Unlimited (TU) setting the goals, the productions rates, and species of fish that you enjoying catching on the Cowlitz River?

Do you want a tribe, like the Yakama's, Who have NO LEGAL fishing rights on the Cowlitz to have special powers in setting policy on how you harvest or manage the fishery on the Cowlitz? Do you want the Yakama's, TU, or AR making the recommendation that will limit the production standards and numbers fish that you may be allowed to catch or harvest in the future on the Cowlitz?

Well if you do, then please don't read what is about to happen to the future sport fishing in the Cowlitz River under the new Draft Cowlitz Fisheries Hatchery Management Plan (FHMP)!

The Plan, as written, will mean dooms day to our sporting fishing on the Cowlitz. The Plan was developed and crafted by Tacoma, to save them millions of dollars each year in mitigation coasts. Tacoma and a few others are attempting to turn the Cowlitz into a "wild fish" river over the next several years. I expect that this issue will develop a few serious debates on how this plans fails to meets Tacoma's mitigation responsibilities for damages that their project has done, and continue to do, to the Cowlitz. I know that Salmo G will most likely defend Tacoma's position that Tacoma is mitigating all that they must do under the Federal Power Act. Other State agencies may jump in, under the cover of there board names to defend how screwed up the FHMP is.

When its all said and done, you will all be able to see for yourselves if I am right about what the new FHMP will do to the Cowlitz fishery. Either way, if you think that you will be able to continue to fish and have "catchable" runs of fish in the Cowlitz in the future for both your and your kids ….. It's time to wake up and smell the roses!

If you enjoy fishing on the Cowlitz and, and yes, harvesting a fish or two, you owe it to your self to read the newly released draft FHMP for the Cowlitz. It's over 175 pages long, but you can just go to the specie that you like to fish, to see just how screwed up the Plan is! After reading it, I will be more then happy to try answering your question! I my reading it as I write, so it may take some time to get back to each of your concerns or questions.

Tacoma and a few others have now created a plan to phase out most of the hatchery production in the Cowlitz in lieu of believing that "wild fish" will be able to produce Tacoma's mitigation responsibilities.

The joke is on us. . . and we don't even know it yet!

Please read it closely, because you are getting screwed big time, as sport fishermen!


Cowlitzfisherman

Reading..........



And reading.........


Still reading...........


Hey CFM, is there a condensed version.

Hmmm, lets see.

We'll draft our own plan. If there's any oppisition to the plan, we can exclude them from from participating because we dont have to negotiate with anyone who doesn't agree with the plan.

Then lets set the trigger levels to an unatainable mark, and make sure there's a plan in place to control the levels so we never have to mitigate that.

And since hatchery fish cost us money, lets figure out a clever way to cut that back @20% each year.

And since it's so obvious what we're doing, lets put out a 175 page report to the public. We can release a realistic version to ourselves.


And lets make customers, residents, and sport fishers pay for all of it while we rake the coin.


one more thing, lets raise rates too. Damm this is fun. Hope those Liberals stay around for a while. Man lets draw up more plans, this is working great.


WARNING!! Before reading the 175 page document, the Sergoen General advises you lube well to avoid ripping and tearing.


Sonamonabiatchy ...........

25) The WDFW shall minimize the number of hatchery adults remaining to
potentially spawn with wild fish through removal of hatchery fish at
sufficiently high harvest and/or trapping rates.


this is about as far as I could get before the lightbulb went off.

AS I posted once before, Billy Frank said to me "If it weren't for the hatcheries there would be no fish at all."

And several years ago, when I asked my high school football coach and fishing mentor why he had quit fishing, his reply.."I don't want to be known as the guy that caught the last salmon."
That statement is starting to make sense to me now.

just more babble, I guess, might be time to go in search of litlcleo

Hey! I have an idea!

Let's have a run of late winter returning "wild" steelhead on the Cowlitz!

Then, we can increase wild steelhead mortality on the Columbia to 7%.

After we do that.... we can gillnet the mainstem Columbia starting in January for sturgeon and on the mainstem Columbia and Cowlitz for smelt. You know.... when the monitoring and regs make it easy to kill lots of "wild" steelhead and hide it from WDFW etc....

Then we can start the commercial gillnet springer season after that, to make sure we kill as many of those remaining Cowlitz "wild" steelhead as we can!

Yep! When Tacoma and gang get done with the Cowlitz and they get to do what is proposed in the FHMP, this will be what you will be using for bait!

ahhh

3/8" x 2 1/2" galvinized?

Maybe brass up the a$$ would fit the bill?

Cowlitz, we've all been screwed so often now I am and surprised were not all wearing depends!

Has anyone put 2 and 2 together yet and figured out why WDFW went along with not having any wild restoration program for the early winter run steelhead? The answer is simple; if you were to have wild native steelhead coming back in early November, you could not have the massive gill net fishery going on in the Lower Columbia for coho at the same time!

Remember how many steelhead they caught in 2002 when they were using coho nets for the tangle net fishery for springers? They took over 20,900 steelhead in the nets and they weren’t trying to get them. That's why WDFW has agreed to do away with our early winter steelhead! If the steelhead, get caught in the Coho net fishery now, it will be OK because they will all be hatchery fish and it won't affect the coho commercial net fishery.

The boys in Region 5 need to spend some time behind bars! This "wild fish" recovery program is nothing more then a joke on the Cowlitz and the jokes being played on you and me!!!

Cowlitzfisherman

Or at the very least, find a spot in the unemployment line. Region 5 staff keeps coming up in these discussions far too often.

More bad news!

I was just reading the amount of production that these guys intend to cut. It will make you sick! In an earlier thread at; http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=016261

Salmo G said;

That would lead us all to believe that the Tacoma was dropping there production down from 900,000 to the low end of 650,000 pounds. That would be 250,000 pounds less in production! That's bad news for the Cowlitz and the fishermen who fish it. But wait….it gets even worse!

When you read the FHMP, they are not going to drop the hatchery production down to 650,000 pounds like we thought, they are cutting it down to 530,000 (page 38 of the FHMP) pounds! That a whooping total of 370,000 pound of fish that you won't be seeing coming back to fish on.

Tell us again Salmo………..how Tacoma is meeting it mitigation!

We are getting screw far worse then even you had thought!


Cowlitzfisherman

Hey Cowlitz, is that 900,000 pounds of released smolts or returning adults?

That's released smolts/ fry ...the whole works!

4Salt subtract 530,000 from 900,000

It, really 370,000 less pounds of smolts/fry

Cowlitzfisherman

I believe ya Cowlitz! I wasn't questioning your math, I just wasn't sure what the 900,000 / 650,000 / 570,000 etc. represented.

Noble effort cowlitz but have you considered spreading the word beyond this board? Yes, we all need/should do our part but you have the knowledge base and are the best versed on the issue.

What about a well-worded, not-to-lengthy letter to the outdoor writers of The Columbian, Seattle Times, Seattle-PI, Tacoma News Tribune, The Oregonian and The Daily Olympian since most of the cowlitz crowd are from these regions?

I hate to be a pessimists but it sounds like minds have been made up and the damage done. What really haunts me is all those cowlitz regulars will now be heading to the coast........heck,it's already happening.

Very sad. I always enjoyed catching those cowlitz summer-runs.

CFM,

I first want to assert that I don't have any interest in the Cowlitz fishery, other than perhaps its impacts on the rest of the Columbia River and its tributaries recoveries of wild steelhead. I only fish there twice a year, and it's not that big of a deal to me.

I do, however, have an interest in sportfishermen having viable opportunities to fish, catch fish, and harvest hatchery fish. I also know that the Cowlitz fishery is a spot where a lot of people do get those opportunities.

That being said, I'm going to ask you some questions that I don't know the answer to, since I'm not up at all on the situation down there, and I know you very much are up on the situation.

Not taking sides...just asking questions!

Under the old license agreement...

1. What was Tacoma Power required to do?
2. What did they do to satisfy those requirements?
3. How did they do meeting those requirements (or not meeting them)?

Under the new license agreement...

4. What are they required to do?
5. What are they going to do to meet those requirements?
6. How will those actions do at meeting the requirements?

And lastly...

7. Are the new requirements less or more than they were required to do under the first agreement?

8. If the requirements did change, more or less, were the changes required by law, created by negotiation, or based on something else?

Without having to read all the documentation, if you could fill me in on this stuff it would bring me up to speed very quickly, and then I could form some opinions about what's going on.

I think it would help everyone else to have this information, too.

Thanks, in advance, Bob, for your help and enthusiasm regarding this program. I know I just asked for a lot of information, but I'm sure I could get it from someone as informed as you are more quickly than any other way. With the answers to those questions I'll be able to form some sort of viable opinion as to what is going on down there.

Fish on...

Todd.

Todd

As an attorney, you know what kind of "load" you just dumped onto me. You know what research is needed to answer your questions that you have just given to me. I am not the world's best typist and what you have asked will take me away from preparing my comments on the FHMP, which are due on the Feb. 12th. That may sound like a lot of time, but I am also helping our attorney prepare our comment on the draft BiOp at the same time That I am writing this reply. I know that you know what I am saying!

I will give it my best shot and try to have your answers out by tonight or tomorrow morning. I hope that you will understand my dilemma that I am in right now. Your questions defiantly deserve an answer and I will try to get back to as soon as possible.

Cowlitzfisherman

Eric

It is hard, if not impossible to be a one man battalion!

I have posted this same issue on one other board besides this one. Many of there members fish or guide on the Cowlitz, and many are also members here. Every time anyone tries to get in touch with the papers, Tacoma sends out there goon squad with the big bucks to back them up. Tacoma news Tribune wrote a fairly good article about 4 or 5 months ago warning of what's to come. They talked to Tacoma's goon squad biologist and he painted a real rosy picture of what a great job that these butts have done.

A friend of mind wrote a big reply back, but as far as I know, the Tacoma News Tribune did not or would not print it. Most of my personal efforts are to inform the fishermen that he is getting screwed! I don't ask for much funding, so my group (CPR-Fish) has very limited funds to make the public aware of what is happening to the Cowlitz. I try to do the best that I can for the everyday fishermen, but I can only do so much and I run out time, money, and hope! And it's just about in that order that it occurs! I can tell you that Tacoma is holding a public meeting on Feb. 5. Tacoma Power is planning an open house-style drop-in public briefing on Thursday, February 5, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Elks Lodge, 2501 N.E. Kresky Ave. in Chehalis.

If you guys want to keep the crowds from swamping your favorite spots, it would behoove you to come to this meeting and tell Tacoma how screwed up the new Cowlitz FHMP realty is. That is something that we all can do, with little cost to us. We will carry the "sword" when it comes to knowing "the facts", but we do need a small army of soldiers to let them know that we mean what we say.

Will you and others join our army? Even if you don't like to fish the Cowlitz for what ever reason you can think, do want the herds of these fishermen falling upon your special honey hole?

Come to the meeting on Feb 5 and stand behind our sword!

They will have to listen to us, if they like it or not. NUMBERS DO COUNT!!!!


Cowlitzfisherman

Thanks, Bob, I appreciate your effort...

It doesn't have to be super-detailed, just a sketch of the answers to give me somewhere to start when I do my own research.

Good luck with your efforts down there...like you said, even if I don't fish the Cowlitz, I don't mind that 500 other people are on the days I'm somewhere else!

Fish on...

Todd.

CFM, Todd & others who care about the fish i love & the sport I'm passionate about........ a BIG thanks for all you do.

CFM, where is the meeting to be held?

Todd, what about the Feb 5th meeting in Oregon City for the Springer Allocation on the CR? What do you know about that & is their public testimony allowed.

I had planned to be available on that day so I would like to know where my time will be best spent.

Thanks.
Jim