This is going to be long so if you live very far from the Chehalis river watershed in S.W. Washington, you may want to scroll down to option 2. There may be other river systems that have a very large number of squawfish, but the Chehalis must have at least 875,576 of them between Adna and Montesano. Maybe more. I fished for them as a boy in the late 40's and they were everywhere as they are now.

I've heard that the predation rate on salmon and steelhead smolts
by squawfish is rather large. If anyone has some hard data on this, it would be helpful. So why don't we:

Option 1: We could possibly have a similar fishery that the Columbia has for them. Granted it could not be the same because BPA has deep pockets to support that kind of bounty. But on a smaller scale it could be supported by one or all of the following:

1. The co-managers could pony up some funds for the smaller bounty. (The Quinaults and WDFW) It would certainly benefit one of those groups. There may be some legal reason WDFW could not participate.

2. The Federal government is all over salmon and steelhead enhancement. There must be some Federal grants that someone from WDFW or in this audience could apply for to support such an undertaking.

3. It would take an action by the legislature but if freshwater licenses were increased by 25 cents, earmarked for squawfish eradication, it would rid the rivers of a lot of those predators.

Problems: Logistics. How does one account for the fish caught?
Where would the check-in sites be? Who would man them? Would it have to be daily?

A little bit of irony: What if the fish caught were ground into a pulp and then rendered into large pellets or bricks and then taken
to the streams where smolts spend their first few months. The squawfish that usually predated the smolts would now be in the lower part of the food chain that would support the smolts.


Option 2: A Sol-Fly squawfish derby. (No one could complain about this.) Some week-end this summer ( it would have to be better than the weather reported at the Forks derby back when) Have a derby on the Chehalis with an entry fee and the top three boats (or whatever) split the money. ) I learned previously that squawfish are a game fish? so a permit would be needed??? Talk about irony!! We could even have a Sol-Fly squawfish T-shirt>

Just some ideas from an old man who grew up calling them squawfish and never made any other connection and still doesn't.

ronnie
Thanks for bringing this up again. I have sent e-mails and made a few calls to try to get something like this going (rewards program) but have not made any real progress yet. I will continue to try and if anyone has any info that would help I will chase that down also. We who live along the Chehalis know we have a very large multi stream drainage that is almost undisturbed by dams or obsticles to fish passage. The squawfish problem is very big with tons of very large fish that prey on the smolts. I don't think there would be a problem with catching as many as we could as the precident has been set on the Columbia with that program.
We don't have the support of the government as we have no real connection to the COE to use for any leverage. You may be right about the WDFG and tribes as a source of funding.
There is a very large wild steelhead presence in the drainage with some hatchery plants but no hatcheries on the Chehalis itself. This should make it a very good candidate for any type of program that would aid with insuring the survival of the wild strains.
I am not sure what percentage of the salmon are wild,but again they do have plantings from several sources.
Let me know if you would like to meet sometime and kill a few squawfish. Bill

A local lake here got over run with squaw fish. This lake was famous for producing large trout, because it had a large perch population. The squaw fish wiped out the perch and the trout population crashed. A few years ago, the fish and game went into a couple of the feeder creeks while the squaw fish were spawning and wound up removing like 80,000 of them or something like that with gill nets. They found it really put a dent in the squaw fish population, and was pretty easy for them to do. Solved a problem that had been ongoing for years. While that has nothing to do with Salmon or Steelhead, it would seem they could do the same thing there ?

laterun,

I would love to go kill a few of them. Just about any time is good for me.

A long, long time ago, maybe the 60's, there was a chemical called appropriately, "squaxin", that was used and it only killed squawfish. I don't know how it worked and why only on that species. I don't think it was used for long. Someone probably complained that the species would be eradicated. That would be about as possible as eradicating E. coli from the earth.

I think I'll google squaxin and see what happens.

I don't have time to put anything together but if you guys put a derby together I will donate $200.00 worth of spinning reels to the cause, probably more if you have a kids division.

JimB

We just hold our own derbies whenever we head down there. Just wish they had a bounty on clams, too.


It's fair hooked, I tell yah.

How 'bout this. During salmon season no boat will be allowed to pull out without killing a dozen PM's.

I always catch those clams on the 'Halis too. They can be good "biters" at times.

1 day we landed 3 of 'em

Rather than having the state pay for the bounty, maybe there is a commercial market that can be identified and will buy them. For example, maybe crab bait, fertilizer, dog food, etc. I really don't know, but that would be much more sustainable than a government run program.

Does anyone know what is done with the fish from the Columbia under the bounty program? How much does the state pay for the fish? What does the state do with the fish?

There would be an issue with "commercial fishing" for the squawfish but if the proposed commercial fishery would (a) reduce mortality in endangered species and (b) have a $0 cost to the state, then it might be an attractive program for the state to get behind.

I believe the bounty on the Columbia squawfish is paid by BPA which is federal funds. I think it starts at about $4. per fish over a certain length, It was 9" but may be larger now.