Lk Washington opens for 2 fish again Saturday th 24th. Round 2 go get em!

Second day of sockeye fishing set for Lake Washington July 24
OLYMPIA – Anglers will have another opportunity to fish for sockeye salmon in Lake Washington on Saturday, July 24, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).

WDFW and tribal salmon co-managers estimate the size of the Lake Washington sockeye run to be approximately 403,000 fish. The sockeye count through the Ballard Locks as of July 19 was 335,715 fish.

An estimated 13,800 anglers caught approximately 13,700 sockeye on Lake Washington during the July 17 fishery, said Tim Flint, WDFW statewide salmon manager. A similar one-day catch on July 24 would likely mean the end of recreational fishing opportunities for the year, Flint said.

The July 24 fishery will open at 4:41 a.m. (one hour before sunrise) and close at 9:50 p.m. (one hour after sunset). The daily limit is two sockeye of at least 15 inches in length. All other salmon must be safely released. Under freshwater fishing rules, anglers can only fish with one rod and must stop fishing once their personal daily limit is caught.

Fishing is closed within 100 yards of the floating bridges, and within a 1,000-foot radius from the mouth of the Cedar River.

Anglers must have a freshwater fishing license and salmon catch record card. Kept salmon must be immediately recorded on the catch record card.

WDFW maintains a Lake Washington sockeye salmon website, at http://wdfw.wa.gov/fish/sockeye/counts.htm on the Internet.

The indians went out a couple of more times since we were out Saturday....Noticed the fish count yesterday was only 5400. No telling how many were caught in the latest tribal net fests. Still fish to be had if you want to sit in line. I'll be in Westport thank you.

Here are some numbers from the Locks


Date Daily Count Total Count
July 7 14,168 195,557
July 8 18,660 214,217
July 9 11,731 225,948
July 10 13,024 238,972
July 11 9,449 248,421
July 12 10,473 258,894
July 13 18,243 277,137
July 14 11,028 288,165
July 15 7,129 295,294
July 16 8,380 303,674
July 17 11,282 314,956
July 18 11,449 326,405
July 19 5,417 331,822

FFF

I will take your sarcastic post for what it is, a sarcastic jab at something you know little about. No big deal.

What my references to the tribes boil down to is not that we can't catch enough Sockeye because of them. It is simply an accountability question. The Muckleshoots have done alot for the Sockeye in Lake Washington but it is the tax and license money that pays for all of it. The $120,000.00 in the budget for WDFW enforcement specifically during the Sockeye sports fishery was generated by citizens of Washington via their taxes. The tribes don't pay taxes. That money was funded based on a projected sports season of one week, not two days. The tribes are entitled by treaty to 50% of the harvestable stocks of Sockeye in Lake Washington even though those fish did not exist in 1855 when the treaties were signed. The run was planted almost 100 years later. So they are "co-managers" who jointly with WDFW determine when we get to fish and how many fish can be harvested.

You don't see them fish because they start at 11Pm and are off the water and away from the TV cameras by sunup. The fish piled in pick truck beds and trailers are not out in the open like the kids and parents on King 5 News. My point is that they can fish in front of the locks where the thousands of salmon caught are not counted and they can fish in the canal at night without enforcement or accountability. No enforcement swarms all over them when they return to the docks...no counts... No publicity for how many they harvest. The other item to consider is that the Muckelshoots have a contract with Safeway to sell fresh Sockeye and the contract stipulated July 13th as the first day of sale. That stipulation in the contract was inked well in advance of the decisions announced as to the opening of the seasons for sports and tribes. The meetings that were held to determine the season timing were heralded as taking run size and escapement into account but how can that be so if the tribal gill net fishery was set so far in advance?

So in conclusion it is an issue of accountability. Sports fishers are scrutinized with a fine toothed comb while the tribes are on their own with no accountability to anyone but themselves. In this day and age of severe cutbacks in all fisheries it is imperative that all user groups are equally accountable. That is not an unreasonable demand. Go ahead and take 50% of everything but stand up and be counted like we are. Simple....

Um, I thought the entire reason that we have sockeye in Lake Washington is the artificial planting of sockeye in the Cedar River as a mitigation fishery for the Muckleshoots, because the white men put the locks into lake washington and damaged the existing fisheries in the Green and Black Rivers.

Or did they teach me wrong?

Grandpa....you're a wise man. We hear little of the tribal fish catch numbers because it's politically expedient to first report the sport catch and then magically the tribes caught the same amount!!! Isn't that amazing! Meanwhile unsuspecting sports fishers bend over backwards for the tribes and hardly feel a thing.

Man, FFF get out of your cave and spend a week in LaPush, Neah Bay, etc...and see the abuses a lot of us have witnessed. You are just plain naive and ignorant.

Right on Grandpa! Keep telling it like it is.
Some of you are so blind.

The Boldt decision contains the phrase "usual and accustomed" in almost every paragraph. Can this fishery, created many years after the signing of the treaties, be rightly described as "usual and accustomed"???

A short story...One time years ago when I had my boat in Lake Union moorage I would travel in and out of the locks at all hours. One night we came back real late and after traveling through the locks into the ship canal we encountered a gill net strung all the way across the narrowest part of the canal. I called the coast guard and they said that the indians had a right to fish at their usual and accustomed fishing grounds.....on the man made canal. Anyway I had to turn around and spend the night in the boat. When the light of day came up the net was gone....To the average man on the street there are no nets in the water.

Remember when they were netting in the daytime? Especially in Elliot Bay....WOW what an outcry from non fishers when they see nets in the water. The tribes have learned alot since the Las Vegas subcontrctors came to town to run their casinos. They learned about being poiltically correct and how to smear the politicians. No more nets in daylight.

Recently the Skokomish tribe on the canal was busted for declaring less fish in their total catch report than the test sampling total. Apparently this happens all the time.

This is not about depriving the tribes of their share but making sure the share is fair. I submit it isn't possible to be fair unless their is accountability on both sides. I think it is possible for the sports fishers to work with the tribes and I hope to see that day come soon but until then I will continue to criticize when I see inequities.

The Boldt decision started our fisheries down a road to disaster. Then came the Rafeedie decision in the 80s allowing the tribes to harvest 50% of all shellfish....If you think salmon accountability is a problem you should do your homework on the shellfish disaster. Those of you asleep at the wheel should wake up and look into what is happening to your natural resources....check out the geoduck problem sometime. Do a google search and do some reading about how that prized clam is being exploited. All at the taxpayers expense and at the peril of the sprts fishers. You get shorter and shorter seasons but the nets carry on as always and then some. You bet I'm concerned and will continue to speak out and work for better times.

Well put,I agree with the accountability thing.
Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

The Suquamish Indians also net a portion of these fish. Are they not form the other side of Puget Sound? Was lake Washington a usual and accustomed fishery for them?? (never mind that there were no anadromous sockeye at the time anyway)

Nope, that is what I remember too. In fact at the time there was a lot of hoopla that in a "few" years we would be able to fish for them every year as sports fisherman. I remember my dad and grandfather arguing about it at the time (I was about 8). The first year we were able to fish for them the fishing was very difficult as no one knew how to catch them. We fished with 2 ounce banana weights with a 0 dodger and a U-20 Flourecent Flatfish. In the 10 outings my Grandfather, Father and I had I was the only one to catch 1 fish!

All these years later and nothing has really changed. The Indians Gillnet at night and there is no accountability on their part to publish their catch counts. Yet the Sport fisherman is checked at the docks and their fish are counted and checked.

The Boldt decision was a tough decision for the residents of Washington. But I do believe that Boldt had no choice in what he did. Unfortunately the decision as stated above is very ambiguous about what "Usual and Accustomed" might mean. Perhaps it is time to get a court ruling on that?

Well anyways, it should be a kick ass time out there. Any of you use flies at all? Or grubs or swedish pimples??