Goinfishin,
Generally WDFW and the Tribes come up with an escapement level together...though it doesn't always work out.
The example you're remembering above is the Queets, where the Quinaults and WDFW fish under GREATLY different escapement numbers.
Smalma,
The argument or if you will the fishery management model is to “use the “best science” to determine the status of the steelhead populations, determine the appropriate management that fits the status of the majority of the steelhead populations and adopt that management statewide.
Therefore we agree that the appropriate management of threatened or endangered stocks would be no target fisheries. Ergo we have a statewide ban on any fishery that targets wild steelhead.
I don't think the above statements are accurate.
The intent is to change the current model that gave us "healthy" fisheries all over the state, until they just weren't healthy anymore.
Are there a multitude of problems that have contributed to the region wide demise of wild steelhead?
Of course.
Is sport overharvest one of the problems.
Of course it is.
It's surely not the only one, and I'd say it's surely not the most significant one. However, it's the one that we can stop cold right now.
On a federal level, with, say, the western spotted owl, how many different management schemes could there have been to keep their populations up, thereby taking that card out of the enviros hands to stop old growth logging?
It seems there were two...do nothing, with business as usual, until they are listed...then stop all logging, and anything else that affects them. They don't recover, and activities that affect them don't, either.
I'm not comparing that scenario directly to the situation at hand, because plenty of things have been done to help protect wild steelhead.
However, it seems to me that the predominant management scheme, no matter what it actually was, has manifested itself as such: harvest the fish until the run falls down too low to replace itself, then close fishing. The fish don't come back, and neither does the fishing.
This is absolutely NOT the best provision of fishing opportunity, at least not after the fishery is just flat out closed.
There are levels of management between harvest and closure, ones that provide opportunity
and protection to the stocks.
Wild steelhead release with appropriate catch and release fisheries provides much more protection to the fish than does a harvest fishery, and provides a lot more opportunity than a closed river.
I think that the state, with a few very notable exceptions (spring CnR fisheries) had managed on an either/or basis...either we harvest them or we don't fish at all.
Just because WSR is not on the "harvest them" end of that two ended stick, doesn't mean it is on the "don't fish at all" end.
This is not a blanket policy where a standard is set for the "majority of the populations" that is applied to all populations, this is a blanket policy that applies to ALL populations and will be applied to all populations. That policy is...
We will not manage by closure. We will manage fish by striking a balance between opportunity and conservation.
Management on the OP streams has been as such...is the river over escapement? Yes? Ok, fish and harvest fish. There are no in season fish counts, other than creel checks, and I can't recall a steelhead fishery EVER being stopped because sporties were catching too many.
That's the same management we've had everywhere else in the state, too, until the answer to the escapement question was "no", in which case the next step is "don't fish".
How about somewhere in the middle for a change? Something like fish, keep the hatchery fish, release the wild ones. If the wild run is enough over escapement, keep fishing and releasing the wild ones.
More days to fish, and more fish to spawn.
Also, I find the "reallocation of impacts" from harvest impacts to incidental impacts argument to be a little tired.
Let's use the Quillayute for an example, since it's the most healthy river we have. What was sport harvest last year? Something like 2500 fish, right?
Using the most conservative, and likely well beyond the actual, hooking mortality rate of 10%, that means that sporties would have had to caught and released 25,000 steelhead to have the same "reallocated" impacts as the harvest impacts.
Criminy, the entire run was only 12,000 fish. Do you really think that it's possible that the sporties would have caught each and every fish more than two times?
Unless I'm mistaken, your "reallocation" argument hinges on your answering "yes" to that question, which I'm sure you can't do with even a semblance of a straight face.
Not only do I think the "reallocation" argument is tired, I think it is the basis for a lot of the divisiveness between release and harvest advocates, one that harvest advocates especially cling to because it makes them look better than the release advocates.
It's the reason that Mayor Reed says something as preposterous as "it's just a bunch of urban elitists who want to make the OP into their own personal playground".
It's the reason why the guy from Sequim in the last AP article calls the Hoh "his river", and definitely not "our river". (Like a guy from Sequim has any more right to the Hoh than some guy from Portland, or Florida).
Why do the anti's always pull out the "stealing OUR fish for your own playthings" argument?
Because it's the only one they have.
Fish on...
Todd