King fishing on Skykomish River could close earlier than expected

Posted by Mark Yuasa



For the second year in a row, the Skykomish River section open for hatchery-marked chinook fishing could be in jeopardy of closing soon if the fish counts don't pick up at the Wallace Hatchery.

"I did hear from the agency there is a concern the Wallace Hatchery chinook return is low and we may not meet the broodstock (spawning) escapement," said Pete Verhey, a state Fish and Wildlife biologist. "There is a potential for it to shutdown. We are hopeful the fish are still out there to keep it open, and we'll wait a couple more days before we make a decision."

The chinook fishery on the Skykomish River from the Wallace River down to the confluence is not a real barn burner, Verhey says, and creel crews on June 19-20 saw 10 chinook and nine steelhead kept, plus five steelhead released. That is about the same as the previous week when 14 kings were kept.

"There sure seem to be a lot of effort on the Skykomish," Verhey said.

The person stationed at the facility at Reiter Ponds reported about a dozen summer steelhead were being caught daily.

"Things were pretty hot and heavy when it first opened (June 12), but not it has tailed off with just some fish caught," Verhey said.

Another sad state of affairs for the Sky. Where to go for some good fishing?

Bummer.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

Ouch. That doesn't sound good

quote "There sure seem to be a lot of effort on the Skykomish," Verhey said.

Tell us there's 15,000+ fish coming back and with perfect water conditions what does he expect.

Other runs have been a little behind schedule, so maybe they're late, lets keep hoping.

On the way back from opening day on the Entiat R. near the end of May, I stopped by the Wallace hatchery and there was 0 chinook and a hand full of steelhead at that time. Hoping it was just too early.

There was a bunch of chinook and steelhead in the hatchery the other day, but fishing the mainstem Sky for them sucks balls...

Sucks balls, now that about sums up a lot of fisheries around here lately, too bad they mismanaged our resource like this.

Fishy

Every time there is a high water June, all the hatchery fish pour in early, pile up, and are caught like crazy...then it's done by June 14th except for stragglers.

The surprise isn't that this happens...the surprise is that people continue to be surprised by it.

Every time we have some sort of a rain event over the next couple of months a handful of fish will show up, haul ass up the hatcheries, and provide a few in the box on the way...but that's about what you're going to get for the rest of the summer.

Fish on...

Todd

but Todd,

Apparently if fish are not programmed to enter the river and migrate at a rate that facilitates good sport fishing, the fishery resource is being mis-managed.

It's probably a waste of time, but I'll mention it anyway. One of the main attributes of hatchery salmon and steelhead runs is compressed run timing, in contrast to the drawn out run timing of wild populations.

Sg

The other thing was there wasn't a spike, or large group of Kings being caught, it has been slow right from the start. They may close it because there are so few at the hatchery, not because they returned to soon.

As for steelhead, yes, the water was up and there are good numbers already at the hatchery and on many days the fishing was fair.

Same week last year...410 chinook at the Wallace hatchery
Report from today...225 ...not good


I wonder how the co-managers are doing ?

The co-managers (Tulalip tribe) don't net the Snohomish system for chinook or steelhead. They have their own hatchery on Tulalip bay.

Todd pretty much spelled it out.

How did he spell it out? he says the fish come in early and then we catch the stragglers after the 14th....no fish came in is the problem.

Last weeks count at the hatchery on the 17th was 105 fish.

I rarely get in on these things and i think i have to chime in on two tonight. Todd is spot on with this one about the sky. Take it from someone thats been on it for many years. Most of June even past the 14th can be very good at steelheading. Cant vouch for the kings because as a fly guide never really target them. The one thing that you can bet on for most of june is big ugly water, people are creatures of habit and then b!tch about the poor fishing, my worst day fishing so far this year is one fish best is five, yet to have a skunk, this hot sunny weather will most likely put an end to that. I watch it pretty much daily for steelies most convential guys fishing typically are fishing the same water they fish when the water is gin clear with 800' of vis and 3000 cfs fishing at 10,000 cfs and 2' of vis or less is a whole different ball game. if you want to learn early june tatics give rotten chum a call or me if you are looking for a fly experince. Not trying to pimp our services but if they are opening reiter as early as i can ever remember fish not being around isnt the problem, too many fisherman and lack of knowldge is more of the problem with the sky in june.

I didn't say anything about the Tribe netting...I simply wondered how their return was...

quote I rarely get in on these things and i think i have to chime in on two tonight. Todd is spot on with this one about the sky. Take it from someone thats been on it for many years. Most of June even past the 14th can be very good at steelheading. Cant vouch for the kings because as a fly guide never really target them. The one thing that you can bet on for most of june is big ugly water, people are creatures of habit and then b!tch about the poor fishing, my worst day fishing so far this year is one fish best is five, yet to have a skunk, this hot sunny weather will most likely put an end to that. I watch it pretty much daily for steelies most convential guys fishing typically are fishing the same water they fish when the water is gin clear with 800' of vis and 3000 cfs fishing at 10,000 cfs and 2' of vis or less is a whole different ball game. if you want to learn early june tatics give rotten chum a call or me if you are looking for a fly experince. Not trying to pimp our services but if they are opening reiter as early as i can ever remember fish not being around isnt the problem, too many fisherman and lack of knowldge is more of the problem with the sky in june.
_________________________
Die hard bug chucker

Joe Ewing
www.northweststeelheading.com
info@northweststeelheading.com


This was about kings not steelhead, its a completely different situation with steelhead.

I like high water, these recent flows have been great. If I want to walk in someplace I can most likely get a steelhead or two, can't do that easily lower in the system anymore though. I bought a place on the river that for years I could walk out and catch just about every type of fish from the bank, that's very hard to do now.

bank fishing on the lower river is tough as hell now, watched many spots get posted. I got that the topic was started with kings but there have been posts discussing the steelies.

"Apparently if fish are not programmed to enter the river and migrate at a rate that facilitates good sport fishing, the fishery resource is being mis-managed.

It's probably a waste of time, but I'll mention it anyway. One of the main attributes of hatchery salmon and steelhead runs is compressed run timing, in contrast to the drawn out run timing of wild populations." Salmo g.

As for Kings on the sky i have only hooked them by accident never really targeted them but i have noticed that they dont really start showing up until the middle of the month with good numbers. Last year sucked and this year isnt shaping up to be so good, but go back 2 years and there were about 3 times as many fish in the hatchery as last year and even then people said the fishing sucked. Management is the key, using the genes of early returning fish to the hatchery only to avoid cross-breeding has a run of fish that gets to the hatchery so fast you have to be more lucky than good to catch them, compound that with big dirty water and it makes the job even harder. The one thing that i have noticed is that people assume that fishing is easy, if it was easy they would call it catching. We all have bad days we all have bad years, does that make us less of fisherman, does it mean that the tribes are to blame, does it mean that the state is to blame? Well we can always blame the last one because they have botched so many things how can anybody trust them. For F@%ks sake 400K springers on the CR then to come out and say we missed it and give us a number around 300K when there are just a few weeks left in the count where a miracle happens on june 1st and springers become summer runs and we end up with 240K or so of springers. For one to belive the state when they say 15K and over the last 10 years the average is prob more like 3K ish, thats just plain gullubility. My comments still hold for true about steelies and high water, and the same can be applied for kings. Before you give up on your fishing change your approach, rising rivers, big dirty rivers and fish that a programed to move fast, dont bitch when all you fish is holding water about the fishing. It might not be red hot fishing but people that venture out of there comfort zone and fish differently when the conditions call for it seem to catch more fish than those that post up on the cracker bar for 10 hours and fish the middle of the hole.

Sorry Rog. Your question was rather vague.

Perhaps if you would have said "I wonder how many fish the Tulalips got back to their hatchery"... it might have cleared things up a bit?

Todd DID spell it out clearly Jody.

The king numbers appear to be down so far this year... OK. Does this mean that the Sky king run has been mismanaged? Hard to say since we're still in June. I'm not givin' WDFW a free pass... but I'm not ready to hang 'em yet over it either. We know that there isn't any commercial pressure on the Sky kings in the local area, but maybe they're being hit hard off the west coast of Vancouver Island? In which case you can't blame WDFW too much for that.

He spelled it out clearly for Steelhead, but the topic was kings and that's what this thread was about.

As in my first post on this thread



quote "There sure seem to be a lot of effort on the Skykomish," Verhey said.

"Tell us there's 15,000+ fish coming back and with perfect water conditions what does he expect.

Other runs have been a little behind schedule, so maybe they're late, lets keep hoping."




I know we can't say its over for Kings yet, they could be late, but from what I've seen over the last few years with the rapid decline of every fish but pinks, I'm not holding my breath.

I will say I was wrong on pinks, they did eventually show up in good numbers. Do we want to talk about the management of Chums….now that's another success story isn't it.


I’m not saying this to argue with people here, its more out of frustration with the current state of affairs.

Before they get to the point of closing down the river for lack of kings in the hatchery I hope they do a float down the Wallace and check a few holes. I bet there is a thousand or more stacked up. To be fair I haven't verified this myself but in the past you could park and walk out on the HWY 2 bridge and see hundreds just looking down at one hole.