That's exactly why I won't support CCA.

They take away the nets overall, what's the point of hatchery fish?

It seems as though stopping or greatly curtailing the hatchery programs now is a very poor idea. On most streams with hatcheries it should be relatively easy to install a barrier to make it impossible for any hatchery fish to go any futher upstream. By stopping the clipped fish AND calling for a 100% clipping of all hatchery origin fish on those streams would be a good place to start. It would not cost that much to implement the installation of the barriers and I'm sure some of the sports groups would be willing to help and donate materials to make it happen. I am a very big supporter of the hatchery releases as I believe our chances to catch and retain fish (salmon/steelhead) will depend on the hatcheries in the near future. Until they come up with a 100% clipping program, we will continue to release inferior fish back into the mix unwillingly causing harm or potential harm to the wild stocks that may or may not exist on these streams.

Please don't try and turn my words... I've said it time and again that I don't like commercial harvest and bycatch. I'm just a bit nervous about taking commercial fisherman from the Columbia river as that will be one major reason for less hatchery fish.........

It's proven that Gillnets cannot be selective enough, if they could they would be already......

Keith

For those of you who are concerned about the issues surrounding competition between wild and hatchery fish of the same, or of different species, a new paper synthesizing all the past science that supports virtually every single one of my points above in this thread on the issue, and comes up with some possible solutions, has been written.

I posted its availability on another thread...

http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/forum...atch#Post436630

Fish on...

Todd

Total run size is still shy of 160K...

Fish on...

Todd

Not quite, T-Rip.

Thru June 6, and with 9 more days of "fuzzy" counting left to go, there's a total of 152.4K (adult plus jack) springers over the dam. Add back 20K sport harvest and 6K gillnet harvest below the dam, then another 1K (actually slightly less) in paper C&R mortalities.... and you get about 181.2K which is right about where the second run-size downgrade by the CRC predicted we would be.... 269K ---> 200K ---> 180K.

If you figure in another 3% pinniped predation below the dam... add in another 5K fish... that makes about 186.2K springers that crossed the CR bar, which is the deadline for the preseason forecast.

So at this point, the preseason forecast missed the number by about 83K.... or about as big last year's entire run-size.

In relative terms they over-predicted the run by 45%.

I'm sure glad my accountant doesn't forecast my business revenue like that!

Thanks for the correction...I completely left out the harvested fish.

Fish on...

Todd

Not to pick a fight, but I really wish people would stop complaining about the fishery managers coming up with bad return "forecasts." Bios cannot control how many fish return despite what many of you seem to think. They're mere mortals.

Return predictions are created by models that incorporate many variables. If one of these variables is whacked out, then the predicted numbers will be wrong. A biologist cannot control how much prey will be available to salmon and steelhead in the oceans. A few people have brought up starving fish. There are some indications that we are on the "bottom" of the natural nutrient cycle. Many studies have been made on nutrient cycling off of coasts, and it has been found that poor nutrient upwelling leads to poor fish stocks. Biologists cannot control this.

People can make bad predictions. Wheatherman do it every day in my area. They're right about 10% of the time. Doctors make bad prescriptions that kill people, or give bad predictions on when someone with a terminal disease will pass away. Stock brokers make bad predictions and lose people millions of dollars.

It happens.

The Bonnie cam has been showing fish almost every time I look at it today...shad and salmon both.

Fish on...

Todd

Lots of Summers (June Hogs) crossing Bonne now. Look at the PIT Tag reports on the DART.