Last October was the first I hooked a Chum Salmon.... Maybe I am naive or maybe I am just not as much of a purist as some, but I went chum fishing with some people around here and we had a blast. My gear and my arms were flat out taxed by the fish hooked.... So they get my respect. It will be interesting to hear about more of the management or missmanagement as the case may be coming up here on this thread.

damn, you beat me to it.

Dave Vedder and I have gone together to BC (Harrison River) to catch coho, springs, and yes, chums in mid to late October several times. Do you want a sore arm? Do you want a blister on your thumb? Do you want non-stop action? Spend a day casting to and catching dozens of 3 to 4 different salmon species........including some of biggest, baddest chums on the planet.

It's pretty cool to release your 10th 20 pound chum after a 15 minute battle and have to sit on the gravel bar, pop open a Kokanee, light a cigar and say, "I'm going to a break for a minute or two.

If you get a chance, read some of Dave's article about chums and the Harrison River in some back issues of STS. Good information.

Snake

Right on Snake. We fish for the Coho and the Chums up in that area too. It's a blast. We start with targeting the Chums using jigs, then try to go after the Coho, which can be hard to get to through all of the Chums. All Salmon are great and deserve our respect. What is happening to our fisheries is really sad.

Two dogs

Its good to see you posting on this subject.

What I've seen first hand from being located on a prime spawning area of the Sky, is a big change in where the fish spawn and when they enter the river. The last two years there was an early push of fish that moved to the upper portion of the spawning grounds and as soon as the nets went in the run stopped, very few fish came in after that and few spawned low in the system. I normally fished for Coho until at least November 1st in Snohomish and when they slowed down I’d switch to Chums. Now there are fishable numbers of chums in September and almost none in November.

These fish came in with the Coho weeks earlier than normal, so by netting this heavily later are we changing the run timing?

The years prior were much better, but the sport fishing success has been dropping off steadily for at least 7 or 8 years, there were far more fish in river over a much longer period of time in the mid to late 90's.

I can also get an idea of the run size by the number carcasses I find on the bank and my dogs don't miss a single one. The last 4 years I've seen far fewer and the last two years they were almost non existent.

In 2007 I caught more steelhead in one day on the OP than I did chums in the Sky all season, the last two years I've caught far more kings on the Sky than chums.

There were a couple of places on the Sky that had good numbers of fish, but these were small areas with about the normal number of fish. These places were pounded hard day after day by a guide boat side drifting with long leaders, at times the same fish were being hooked time after time. This success was reported so frequently it seemed the run was better than it actually was. These spots started early and ended early, with few fish elsewhere in the river.

This is another question for you. Were the record high numbers of chums earlier this decade determined by accurately counting the number of spawning fish, or was it by subtracting the number reported as being caught in nets from the estimated run size?
I can see management thinking returns were great when there was a huge number reported in the nets and then not counting fish in the river accurately by only looking in a few locations, or thinking the numbers they counted were wrong by looking at gill net numbers and run estimates.

I remember catching huge numbers of chum out of the Chehalis system years ago. Haven't caught many in recent years.

I enjoy catching and releasing them on both gear and flies. Hard fighting fish and good practice for the upcoming winter steelie season.
Cerise jig and a piece of prawn, bobber down all day and a good arm workout.

No one should fish for Chums.....That would leave more for Sue n I ....we don't keep-em, but chums are fun to fight! Sorry we like to catch fish when available and legal to do so.... Ask John @ Rotten Chum guide service... John's a Steelhead ,Salmon n Trout catchin' magnet !!!

Too bad she swam away ....

What's up Rog...hey PM with your Phone #...I spilled beer on mine this weekend. BTW, those are not moldy fins...just white tips from being in the freshwater a couple of days. Ondarvr sums it all up...he's a quality guy and knows his fish...especially for living on the middle Sky...alike with him I have witnessed our chums disappear...and not on paper but for real.

I don't have any problems with Chums. Sometimes, when decent numbers are present, I will even target them. I don't eat them but a fresh one shows itself well in battle. They are fun to catch especially when other species aren't around.

My take on diminishing numbers?......over-sportfishing as much as over-netting. I went to college in Oregon and fished, among other areas, the Tillamook district streams. The tribs in Tillamook Bay were lousy with chums in the mid-80's. All were open to harvest; 2 fish per day. It was about this time, for whatever reason, that their popularity took off. They were in such numbers that guys who had always ignored them suddenly found them an easy substitute for the dwindling numbers of the more prized chinook and coho. In less than a decade, the numbers crashed, seasons on them were closed and it has never been the same. I think Salmo's theory of that being their southern range has some merit and thus are more sensitive to environmental changes but I also think they were sport-fished past the brink of recovery. There are no commercial fisheries down there (imagine that!)

Turn the page to Grays Harbor and the Chehalis Basin. Similar story, different region. it was also in the 80's that the popularity of fishing for chum took off. I can even give you the year......1984. That year, the Satsop got a PHENOMENAL return on coho. Kings and chums were present in good numbers too. There were so many silvers that year that people came from near and far to load up. Chums and silvers are present at the same time so needless to say, many a chum was caught while the silver-fest was happening.

Word got out.

It was so good that people all of a sudden rationalized the drive to get in on the good fishing. More people fishing= more fish caught x how many years of liberal limits + the commercial fishery= less fish spawning.

Then it was discovered that all the tribs had them and the result is what we have today. In this case, the sporties are just as much to blame as the commercials. Just look back at the last good year of chum fishing when they were allowed to be kept and recall how many skanky, fungus-backed carcasses were being hauled home in the name of "good smokers" by so-called "fishermen". You see it all over the state these days.

Unfortunately, it went unchecked for too long on the Chehalis and they are going the way of other local species......down the toilet.

An estimate of the escapement is made and then the catches are added to it to determine what the "actual" run was.

The escapement estimate is based on spawner surveys in selected index areas.

[quote=Rotten Chum]What's up Rog...hey PM with your Phone #...I spilled beer on mine this weekend.


Hey John....If Animal Beer will eat your phone, whatcha suppose it does to yer insides???? Ha Ha

OK, you all called my bluff. That's great, it's always good to share what information we have, I say. Anyway, I'll have to get some more numbers tomorrow, but here are few more thoughts.

Escapement numbers are estimated independently of the fishery and after the fact. I can see why ondarvr thought it might be different, but escapement estimates are actually a pretty good, independent, way of assessing performance after the season. Accuracy? Well that's another question. There's some thought that high chum escapements are overestimated and low ones are underestimated, but, whatever, they are definitely based on post-season in river surveys and are at least ranked correctly. I'm pretty confident that 2007 was incredibly low (duh), while 2006 was very high.

In 2007, after the season, it was clear that different fishery management would have resulted in better escapement. An earlier than usual timed run, combined with a flow pattern that kept the fish in the bay longer than usual, resulted in an inseason update that was too high. Honestly, all seemed good to keep the fishery going, and when the later portion of the run didn't materialize there were no extra fish to pass up river. 2008 was similar, at least to the extent that the inseason update was too high. Not being involved in day-to-day management any more, I haven't looked at the detailed numbers yet to know if the earlier timing occurred also in 2008, although ondarvr's observations suggest that happened.

Again, it's more than just a fishing problem, though. The low fry index this year, coming off of the large 2006 and ok for an odd year 2005 escapements, suggest an inriver survival problem too. This is no excuse for misjudging the run inseason. We should be able to do that pretty well when we have a species that's mainly harvested in the terminal area. But it's an important piece of information, as is ondarvr's observation of a possible timing change that we shouldn't ignore.

As far as fishing and timing go -- it's definitely possible to shift the timing of a chum run through fishing, and definitely possible for that shift to revert back to normal when the fishing gets more even. I've seen both happen. Our management plan states that fishing pressure should be distributed as evenly as possible across the run timing, and we should be able to do that most of the time. When conditions change,though, the old way of doing business might not work. That's what happened in 2007.

I'll post some relevant numbers here when I can get my hands on them.

TwoDogs........So back to my original statement.........are you trying to say those boats netting out in front of mukilteo are there for show and have no impact on the amount of fish returning to the snohomish system.......You must be either a politician or commercial fisherman.......If neither i would recomend you go into politics because youve surely got yourself convinced, and from your soap box you might be able to shovel enough B.S to convince others, but probably not here.......

TwoDogs, I appreciate your response but what about some numbers??

2007/2008 total fish/poundage commercially caught in the Snohomish/Stilly/Skagit "zones"

2005/2006 as well to compare the exploitation when roe prices were not as high

If accurate information is coming I would expect to see a direct correlation between the amount of fish commercially harvested and the price of chum roe in Asia. Prove me wrong and others who think the same thing as your response above does not provide much in the way of hard data on exactly what the commercials did to these specific runs in the past 2 years.

What Sg says about coastal chum populations is right on. Dike and levy projects eliminate many of the side channels and estuary tidal areas where juvenile chum rear. I suspect the same could be said for the Puget Sound chum populations. The lower reaches of almost all the local rivers have had recent extensive development. I don't think the gillnet fishery is any bigger today than it was 30 years ago. The only difference is that chum are worth more now so fewer fish have to be caught to make the same amount of money.

I would also say that the commercial fishing industry respects chum for more than the roe. Chum are the second most economically important pacific salmon, second only to pinks. They are the salmon of Japan and Korea, and are equal to pinks in Russia. They are an important commercial fish in Alaska and Canada. They could become even more valuable if the fears of some Japanese and Korean scientists are true. They think that climate change may cause the northern Sea of Japan to become warmer. The Japanese and Korean chum migrate through that area on the way to the Gulf of Alaska and their survival would be reduced.

Some of you may not know TwoDogs, he's a bio for the tribes, or at least has been, and has a great deal of information that he will freely share with all who are concerned. In my dealings with him he has always been straight forward, honest, polite and non combative (its not us versus them), so please treat him in the same manner.

Twodogs

Since 2002 there have been many high water events on the Snohomish system and I know they must have big effect on inriver survival, so what do you see in fry counts after these years (almost every year since 2002).

Our sport success has been dropping since around 2000, much of this may be due to run timing, most of us target Coho until the end of Oct, so we may be missing what now is the peak of the run. Plus with early fish typically spawning higher in the system and with no late fish to speak of, there are no fish lower in the system where in the 90's we did so well. Your counts would then hold true in an increase, or at least a good number of fish in the system, but in the lower river where later fish tend to spawn and where it may be more difficult to count, the river is barren.

If these lower river fish had never been counted as accurately as the ones up higher, then half the run could be gone and the numbers counted wouldn't change much. The fry counts would drop though, so it would seem the escapement was good, but inriver survival poor.

Chums got more respect once they were called Keta or Silverbrite salmon. I'd guess about $2 a pound more respect in the store.
You can even see how much they were respected by the WDFW and the commercial fleet last year.
http://wdfw.wa.gov/fish/regs/commregs/salregs.htm
They respected them so much I almost didn't see any chum carcasses during winter steelheading. I'd usually expect to see dead chums all over the place. This winter I'd see maybe one or two on the beach of each run I fished.

i actually agree with this, and it's weird because they are pretty badass. i feel like salmon shark don't really get any notoriety either.

Sorry about not posting Sno chum numbers sooner, or now. Been swamped, and the people who are supposed to convert catch and escapement data to what you want to see haven't done that yet. So I'll have to do it myself. I appreciate ondarvr's kind words. There was definitely overfishing in 2007, summerrun. That's what the numbers will show. But you also need to know that the managers do what they can to correct past mistakes. Sorry if my last remarks seemed political. I was honestly trying to share some facts and observations. I do believe that there is a need to carefully manage Stilly/Sno chum this year given the low forecasts, and I have made that point in the management forums. As you know, NOF is usually dominated by chinook and coho concerns, so sometimes people need to be reminded there are other species of concern.