Contrary to popular belief I did NOT create this monster.... it's what we're left with after tribal treaty obligations and the ESA. I will go thru the mathematical convolutions of how this run is parsed up between 3 competing user groups, using as round a numbers as possible to make it easier for folks to wrap their minds around so that the allocations make sense.

The first priority is ESA, and CR upriver spring chinook are managed with a fixed exploitaion rate (impact) of no more than 15%. ESA has determined that we can purposely "take" 15% of the wild run year in and year out without sending the recovery trajectory toward extinction. Doesn't say we're actually going to recover the critters with this harvest strategy, just that "taking" 15% will keep them from going functionally extinct.

The next priority is the treaty obligation.... 50:50. The number of dead fish in our totes and boxes should not exceed the number of dead fish in theirs. There is no arguing that a poopload of hatchery fish are produced with your tax dollars for the singular purpose of fueling their eventual harvest. The problem is that there are way more of them available than we have the ability to harvest given the constraints of ESA.

Because the tribe does NOT fish selectively (they take everything they encounter, hatch or wild), the allocation of "impacts" must be made extremely lop-sided to "help" balance the total numbers of dead fish on each side of the treaty. Of the 15% "take", we get 2% and they get 13%. Because we are allocated such a tiny impact, we are prevented from accessing the lion's share of the available hatchery fish. And even with an overwhelming share of the allowable ESA impact, the treaty tribes' NON-selective fishing strategy prevents them from accessing the lion's share of the available hatchery fish as well.

***

Now let's look at how the numbers pencil out on a hypothetical runsize of 200K. Let's say the mark rate on this run is 4:1..... 80% of the fish are hatchery and 20% are wild. That means 160K hatch and 40K wild. ESA says we can't kill more than 15%, in other words 6000 wild fish. The tribes get 5200 of them and we get 800. They expend their allocation as direct harvest. We kill ours as incidental mortalities to gain access to far greater numbers (more than 800) of hatchery spring chinook.

Of our 800 available fish, let's allocate them 50:50 between comm and sport. (There is still a stalemate between OR's 50:50 and WA's 55:45, but for the sake of round numbers, let's stick with 50:50) That means 1%, or 400 dead ESA springers for each camp.

With 10% release mortality assigned to sports, we can handle up to 4000 wild fish before expending our allowable 400 dead fish impact. With a mark ratio of 4:1, that means we can harvest 4 times that many hatch fish.... i.e. 16,000 hatchery spring chinook in the box.

Release mortalities assigned to commies are all over the map from roughly 15% with tooth nets to 40% with gillnets appropriately-sized for chinook. The exact mortality will depend on the proportionate time each gear type is fished during the season. For round numbers, let's call it 30%.... i.e. encounter for encounter, they burn their impacts three times faster than we do at 10% mortality. It means that they will only be able to handle 1/3 as many wild fish as we are allowed.... in this case, 1333 ESA fish. At a mark rate of 4:1 they can access 5333 hatchery fish with their allowable impact.

Total harvest NON-treaty side is now 16,000 sport.... plus 5333 commercial.... plus 800 dead ESA springers. Total 22,133 fish killed. Of the 160K hatch fish available, sports access 10%, and commies access a little over 3%. That means about 87% of the hatch fish are left in the river.

***

Now on the treaty side, they legally can harvest up to 5200 wild ESA fish. Of the original 160K hatch fish, we removed ours, leaving only about 139K for the tribes. Of the original 40K wild fish, we removed ours, leaving them with about 39K. Instead of the original 4:1, the mark rate on the remaining fish in the river is now only about 3.5:1 for the upriver tribes. Apply that to the treaty allocation of 5200, and they get access to roughly 18,200 additional hatchery fish for the box... roughly a little more than 11% of the available hatchery fish in the entire runsize. Total catch is 23,400 dead fish.... roughly equal to our own.

***

This is the undeniable world of ESA and treaty catch-balancing as we know it today. Sadly, it gives all users a combined access to only one out of every four of the hatchery fish specifically created for harvest.

Bottom line, we burn 15% of the wild run to gain access to 25% of the hatch run.

Such a deal....

Forgive me for the stupid question, but why would the tribe give up so many hatchery fish for 5200 wild fish? Wouldn't that be an incentive to figure out a more selective fishing approach? I'm also curious to know how closely the taking of those 5200 wild fish is monitored.

because thats the way they like to fish.

I think a lot of people are missing something very simple. What happens to the market price of salmon when the tribes and commies flood the market with all those selectively harvested fish? They know.

eyeFISH,

Thanks for the homework.

Did that put you out of a job Boater?

Just curious since this is lower and mid Columbia impacts, then it moves into a new management areas. What happens to the remaining fish? Hatcherys, Do the tribes have seperate fisherys in the Tribs? Methow etc.. Idaho fisherys? I really dont know were they end up.

Fish monger,

Boater is brief, but correct. That is how the tribe's prefer to fish. Going selective would mean changing their harvest model. The current model is one of individually franchised (by the respective treaty tribe) fishermen. Each fisherman thinks he is the highliner and can and will harvest more fish than others. Preserving this fishing model is in his best self interest, even if the tribe as a whole harvests fewer fish overall. In a selective fishing context, the fishing either becomes more communal or more capital intensive, or both. That is a strong disincentive, despite the potential for overall higher earnings. Higher earnings overall are meaningless at the individual fisherman level unless they accrue to that individual fisherman. Ergo, the reason for resisting selective harvest methods in commercial fisheries.

Goharley,

No problem with flooding the market. There is plenty of market space for the entire harvestable number of premium quality CR spring chinook at premium prices if the fishery were managed to that end. It isn't. It likely won't be. Thanks to human greed and avarice and obsession with status quo, sensible changes are not readily accepted.

Sg

SBD,

That's the reason the managers are trying to reduce the number of hatchery salmon that are ending up in the natural spawning areas, spawning with wild ESA fish. That's where they are ending up, and that is the perceived problem.

Sg

Are these all coming out of the Dworshak hatchery

is he helping you on your 5th grade project ?

Boater,

Thanks for bringing CCA to the PNW due to your inability.

So in other words, the tribe has this entire fishery by the balls (so to speak), because they "prefer" to fish a certain way? Maybe there are certain ways I would prefer to fish, but either I cannot lawfully do so, or it's not in the best interest of the fish. Just venting now, but it sounds like a crap reason to me.

No...

Just helping everyone else on the board to understand that as long as the tribes harvest CR upriver spring chinook NON-selectively, there is no getting around the fact that 75% of the hatchery fish will be left in the river.

It doesn't matter one iota that the NON-treaty gillnets become more selective. The number of fish harvested on the NON-treaty side CANNOT increase in any substantive measure because of catch-balancing.

The biggest constraint on recreational opportunity is NON-selective tribal fishing.

Most everyone doing the mathematical mental masturbation on this issue does so within the context of fishing for scraps.... a 2% sized pie. Think outside the box for just a moment folks. What if that NON-treaty pie were able to be enlarged by 2- or even 3-fold?

And no, I didn't just fill my self-prescribed supply of medical marijuana, folks.

Think about it? Why do the tribes get 87% of the ESA impact? To subsidize their NON-selective fishing strategy and still achieve catch balancing.

If they fished with even a modicum of selectivity, catch balancing could be achieved with fewer dead ESA springers than the ridiculous 15% impact allows. Probably enough to double or triple the impact allocation on the NON-treaty side, and actually put MORE wild ESA springers on the gravel.

Imagine how much NON-treaty harvest opportunity expands in an allocation scenario of 10% treaty, 4% NON-treaty, and 1% "bonus" for the gravel.

Hell if I'm gonna dream, may as well dream BIG..... 6% treaty, 6% NON-treaty, 3% "bonus" for the gravel!

Now there's a win-win-win!

How would you like the recreational impact share doubled or tripled? Bet that would buy a lot more days on the water, or perhaps even a 2-fish bag for at least part (all?) of the season?

The status quo leaves 3 out of every 4 hatchery fish unharvested.

If we can't harvest them, what's the point in making them in the first place?

And therein lies the rub...making the non-treaty commercials be "more selective" doesn't help fishing or fish...yet some are sure spending an awful lot of time pushing it anyway, and claiming otherwise.

No one, and I mean NO ONE will be able to tell the tribes to do anything that they don't want to do, beyond making sure they stay within their allowable ESA impacts, including them reducing our take of hatchery fish to make sure that the ratio of hatchery/wild fish that make it above Bonneville is sufficient for them to harvest the same amount of hatchery fish as the combined total for the non-treaty fishers (us and the commercial guys).

For some inexplicable reason some folks are reading what Francis wrote as a good reason for purse seine fishing, when it is in fact exactly what I and others have been telling you for a year now...it's an utter waste of time and resources to "win" something that produces no winning whatsoever for the fish or the fishing, outside of reducing incidental impacts to steelhead, and perhaps some sturgeon.

As I've said all along, and will continue to say...if the pushers of this selective drug would just come out and say "we realize this won't help springer fishing or do jackshit for ESA springers, but it will help a few thousand wild steelhead and maybe some sturgeon", then at least they'd be telling the truth and we could haggle about the efficacy of doing it...but instead they rely on a complete upside down interpretation of the facts, and somehow find an opportunity for ESA recovery AND better sportfishing, contrary to any reasonable interpretation of the facts at all.

It's just an impossibility, both on paper and in the river.

Point that out to the zealots, and rather than be engaged in any sort of useful conversation utilizing facts and logic, they fall back to "the CCA is so great" and "you must love gillnets!"...and falling back on those arguments is the surest sign that they do not have one fuckin clue what they are talking about.

Have a banquet, pat yourself on the back for the good eats and the auction that is used to fund the next auction, and watch the big Columbia River experiment blow up in your face when all the believers are finally forced to see that it is a complete waste of their time and money to support something that is at best negligible for the fish, and will severely curtail sportfishing...at best.

At worst, it will be worse for both the fish and the fishing.

If you really give a rat's ass about Columbia River fish and fisheries, put your time into the two things that will actually make a difference...getting the non-treaty commercial fishers completely off the river...completely gone, forever...and put the money and energy into habitat issues (which include dam operations).

That will put more wild fish on the spawning grounds, and make fishing better...the stated goals of the "selective" experiment, that the experiment will not even remotely further.

Fish on...

Todd

SBD,

Not just Dworshak; also Winthrop, Leavenworth, Yakima, Klickitat, Carson, Little White Salmon, Chelan, Priest Rapids, Rapid R., Hells Canyon (?), Wenaha-Grand Ronde, Umatilla, Deschutes/White R., Sandy, and I may have left out one or two.

Fish monger,

In a word, yes. Treaty rights are legally very powerful.

Todd,

Just thinking out loud here, but why is catch balancing so controlling? Is it a central part of the Columbia R. fishing agreement? In other situations it would be deemed a foregone opportunity by the treaty tribes; that is, the fish are there to be caught provided they choose to fish selectively. But by deciding not to, they forego considerable harvest opportunity. Why should the non-treaty sector be held to "catch balancing" if they are willing and able to fish selectively and harvest more of the hatchery fish? Just a thought, not actually trying to stir the pot further.

Sg

We're going to have to make sure they get a fair shot at getting their share of hatchery fish...and yeah, it sucks, and yeah, it's not fair that they don't have to change their fishing techniques to help themselves assure that they get their share, but life isn't fair, especially when it comes to comparing the treaty right to the non-treaty privilege.

The most fair thing would be to say "it's not up to us to adjust our fishing to make sure they get their share, when they can adjust their own techniques and make it happen"...but I just don't see it happening that way, it never has before, and we can't "make" them do anything, even while we are beholden to them to make sure they get their fish.

Anyway, catch balancing is just an additional layer of BS on top of the many, many layers of BS that are already piling on all over the "selective fishing" debacle that may be coming our way on the LCR...not controlling nor most important, by any means.

Fish on...

Todd

Thanks thats what I was wondering, then there would be a different set of impacts like the lower Columbia Tribs to conduct other sport/tribal fisheries..Which might explain why the Tribes ain't really up for Selective Fishing in the lower mainstem..Sports spend money on the reservations and there probaly selling surplus to fund there hatcherys.

A "P.S." to my first post...

The money to pay for this "experiment" on the Columbia River is not coming from the commercial sector...it's coming from YOU, THE SPORTSMEN who buy the new Columbia River surcharge license to fish there, it's coming out of Mitchell Act Funds that I as a fishing tackle manufacturer/retailer pay into and that money pays for YOUR hatchery fish on the Columbia River in part, and it comes from BPA funds that are currently being used for habitat and dam operations modifications, the two things that would actually help fish the most on the Columbia.

So...not only is this whole shebang not good for fish, and bad for fishing...it's also taking money away from YOU, away from things that will actually help fish and/or fishing.

Excellent idea.

All to put a few thousand more fish in the boxes of non-treaty commercial fishers, not exactly a fish or fishing friendly proposal, to say the least.

Fish on...

Todd

http://www.fws.gov/dworshak/

Co managed by the Nez Pierce which means it probably employs alot of tribal members.




http://www.fws.gov/dworshak/staff.html

Thanks to human greed and avarice and obsession with status quo, sensible changes are not readily accepted.

Quote by Salmo g.

Any change seems to run the risk of failing someone somewhere.

Todd, why not come out and tell everyone to join WSC cause that is the same stuff they push.

United we stand divided we fall, just like the last 140 years.

Fishy