riverdick, PM your email address.

Fish on...

Todd

I can "trust" they are tanking doesnt sit well with me. I know they arent doing "well" in regards to historical levels but at least in the last 10-15 years of fishing this river, the previous 2 years have been much more productive for me and some of my fishing partners than the previous 10+. Hook and line surveys arent used as part of this study unfortunately.

I would like to know what the confidence intervals for the predictions made by the WDFW are??? anyone care to provide that? are we talking junk science levels?

As stated last spring the flows were unusually high and turbid from March until the 2nd week of June. Floaters arent going to be able to spot too many redds in these conditions. Cross checking from the air alot of good that does with no vis. Still a huge varation in accuracy. Some of the areas fish spawn in the upper green are not necessarily shallow tail outs and surveying is difficult to say the least in low/clear water conditions let alone more turbid high water. Combine those less than favorable surveying conditions and i can see why the escapement was low.

No S*@t... look at the Skagit. The goal is only 3 times as large as the goal for the Green. Compare the two systems oh wait they arent comparable.

what about bycatch in the salt.

As recent as the '60's sportfishers were HARVESTING over 20,000 wild steelhead from the Skagit...now the escapment goal is only 6000, and it only makes that about 2/3 of the time...

Fish on...

Todd

I'm a fifth generation Green River native, so the state of affairs really pisses me off. Blows me away that they allowed people to keep nates on the Green in recent years. How could the Green of all places be the only non-Oly river to keep nates? Does WDFW understand that the Green turns into the Duwamish? Have they seen what happened to the Puyallup?

as recent as 13k years ago there were 0 steelhead in all of puget sound rivers and most if not all of the penninsula. Everything was under a 3000-5000 ft thick slab of ice known as the vashon ice sheet.

This is because there isn't a true summer run of natives on the green. Any unclipped summer fish you catch on the green was most likely missed by the fish wheel just above the aburn/black diamond bridge. A large portion of hatchery fish spawn out in the river. The wheel catches the smolt on their way down for marking. That is my understanding of the 1 unclipped fish limit on the green. But I could be totally mis-informed.

The Cedar, White, and Green would have Sweet runs of both summers and winters if they were never diverted back in 1910....Maybe

Bunker

Sad to hear.
As far as hatchery fish they did get as many as last year back already. That isn't much, but shows they are a year behind closing it early as this is clearly a reaction to a bad year last year.
The combination of massive hatchery plants and turning the few wild fish left into plants under the name "broodstock" has done this system in. Hatchery interaction is high on this river. Everytime I have witnessed a salmon or steelhead spawning it has always been a hatchery fish and a wild fish. They need to get ALL of the hatchery planted fish out of the mainstem and moved to Soos creek if they are going to continue to plant them.

That the diversion of the Cedar and White hurt steelhead is probably true. Also hurt chinook.

Did help the sockeye, though. No diversion, no sockeye.

Anyone that has looked at the recent decline in Green wild winter steelhead production has to be concern. What has happen in the Green is a reflection of the situation through out the Puget Sound/Geogria Basin; just that the Green is joining those populations in decline a little later than some of the others.

As mentioned earlier in the Spring of 2009 only 304 wild steelhead spawned; that was out of estimated run of 312 adults. What really should cause folks great concern is the number of spawners that produced those 312 adults. The wild escapement in 2004 was 2,359 and in 2005 it was 1,298. I would think that when the managers see production dropping to a point it takes 5 or more spawners to produce a single returning adult that drastic actions are needed.

Wonder what all you riverside biologists would recommend doing in that situation. The co-managers assumed that the same poor R/S seen in 2009 would continue in 2010 (erring on the side of the fish). The tribe agreed not to mount any steelhead fisheries. And as we have seen WDFW is closing the river as soon as the Chamber's Creek hatchery fish are essentially done.

BTW -
While the escapements of our wild salmonids in our Puget Sound river basins are estimates the methods used for Green River winter steelhead IMHO are likely to produce the best escapements estimates of any in Puget Sound.

Regarding the allowing of the retention of wild steelhead in the recreational fishery. Remember that was only during the summer season. That kill was aimed at natural produced summer steelhead that were not native to basin (the result of spawning of hatchery fish). The thinking was that production of summer fish was at the cost the wild winter fish. Frankly from the wild winter point of view allowing the retention of those fish probable was not adequate. Allowing the retention of any of those wild summers and ending the planting of summer hatchery smolts may have been a better strategy.

Tight lines
Curt

Shut it down for 10 years.

Yeah and then hope it recovers better than the Nisqually did, closed in early 90's-----never to return. Very sad situation.

Well, we can both fish it to extinction and turn it into another Cowlips, or we can try and salvage what little spawning fish we have.

to turn it into the cowlitz, you'd have to be able to get hatchery fish back...something that all of the southern PS rivers are piss-poor at.

...and on how many of those rivers was in-river harvest the reason the escapement goals were Not met...?

At least 3....

What I cant seem to understand is how, in the summer/fall/winter, one can still legally walk out of the green(or any PS stream) with two "trout". One can legally use barbed/treble hooks with night crawlers and catch these so called "trout" IMO allowing this to continue year in and year out is causing much more harm to the #'s of wild fish returning to this system than a selective catch and release fishery for returning adults.

Spending many days a year on this particular system fishing for summer runs I see countless #'s of uneducated folks with their "Trout" gear walking out with native smolts as well as many dead floaters from the ones they release. Curt, I know you are an advocate for shutting down these "trout" fisheries, why are our rules soooo behind the times in these regards?

The interactions between resident fish and anadromous fish, and effects of a "trout" fishery on smolt #'s is not new news. Why dont we see emergency rule changes in place to combat these problems througout PS basin?

Question: Could closing of the Green River to fishing actually hurt native fish populations MORE in the long run than leaving it open???

Seeing how WDFW's managment practices are to prevent hatchery/native fish interactions in many systems throughout the state, through regulations like mandatory retention of adipose clipped steelhead (Methow River). I find it interesting that WDFW would close a river, which has a good number of hatchery fish currently residing in it, inorder to protect the native fish. My reasoning below.

The upper Green River this year it has been good (compared to some years in recent past) for hatchery summers and so far good for hatchery winter fish as well. I have seen several limits hauled out and caught quite a few myself. Those hatchery fish tend to hang out in the upper Green through the month of February. Last year I witnessed several hatchery fish landed on the last week of the season. I believe this year returns are BETTER than last year, as far as hatchery fish to the upper river (several of you who fish the upper Green can verify the river is better than many have been led to believe).
Since the river is closing, the remaining hatchery fish will not be caught and removed from the system like they would normally if the season was open. Those hatchery fish will spawn with the native fish, and we all know that when a hatchery and wild fish spawn together the fecundity rate is low low..if not zero. Thus if a good number of hatchery fish spawn with or compete with the few returning natives this year, the recruitment from this years native spawners will be low and potentially of poor genetic integrity(reasoning behind mandatory hatchery fish retention on the Methow)

My ultimate point is that if the river is closed and the hatchery fish(which ARE in the system) are NOT removed via catch/fisherman, it will create a larger overall impact on future escapement #'s of native fish, than the total impact of catch & release mortality if the river had been allowed to stay open. Additionally C&R mortality could also be reduced further if WDFW made a rule change to selective gear rules.

IMO, it would meet the needs of both the fisherman and the native fish much better than closing the system.