According to the regs...we are not only having a sporty chum season on the Snoho System but the limit is 3 fish a day...yet another example that the department is managing the people and not the fish...the tulalip tribe if I understand things correctly are set to catch 5,000 and we sporties have a 3 fish limit...how are our chums ever going to recover? The fishery shouldn't be open period for anybody. I am disgusted regarding this issue and am blown away by the state's decision to do this...hope the limit of 3 is a typo and wish the season was closed for retention on the Snoho System altogether. On the Sky from Sultan downstream...it is hard to even find a chum spawning...most of the current spawners are from Sultan and upstream...now that it is open...people are going to be hammering the beds above Sultan and bonking these fish...3 a day per person. Sickening!!

I feel you bro. It is all so ridiculous. I am still waking up every morning trying to stomach the fact that I have to fish a bobber on the lower Samish for plentiful hatchery turds yet these dwindling wild chum are going to get snagged raped and pillaged until they are gone from right on top of their spawning beds. Makes about zero sense.

Yeah... I also noticed that one. WTF?

They probably put it in the regs because the tribes want some sort of harvest and the commercials won't take that without getting in on it also. All of this while counting paper fish in the hopes that they didn't damage it so bad that it never comes back.

Our Dept working for us once again!


Fishy

Unless the preseason runsize forecasts chum well above the escapement goal, there should be no season, recreational or commercial. If there are surplus chum, and I have no idea if there are, I think the sport catch limit could be 10 chum per day, and it wouldn't have a measurable effect on the escapement. How many chums are sport fishermen going to actually keep over the season? 1,000? 2,000? Those figures are much smaller than the error bounds of the runsize estimate. What I'm suggesting is that the sport catch of chum salmon is probably irrelevant to chum conservation needs. Tell me I'm wrong.

Sg

Im with SG on this one, people actually keep these things??? And if they do, I bet they only make that mistake once!!!

mostly tic, but it is kind of weird that it goes from no retention for years to whack three the next year.

Maybe an economic stimulus program for Sultan and Goldbar, and the Rose Garden Society of Snohomish County?

I am going to disagree with you...nobody should be killing any of these until there is proof that the run size is healthy and booming...or be camped out on their spawning beds rippin corkies and yarn through their head, face, fins, and guts.

I hadn't noticed this in the regs till this post.......Its a shame to be keeping them without proof of a healthy run size. I caught and released quite a few last year on accident while fishing for coho and steel but would never keep one even if the numbers are booming. I caught them with regularity above and below sultan so not sure if most of the spawners are above sultan or not. I know they were invading the zoo (reiter) in some serious numbers for awhile.
Kinda a shame to be doing this. Seems counter productive.

I've always enjoyed fishing for chums if they are fresh and not on the redds as they are tough fighters at this point.

I'm happy to see an open season but wish it was for C&R only. I prefer to use light wire hooks on jigs that will straighten out after a few tough runs.

My personal retained limit would be two chums per season, not three a day. The only reason I keep those is to make salmon jerky which is a tasty snack.

Since it can be an action filled and fun fishery, we should limit any retainment to a minimum.

I remember how thick they used to be and late. Early steelhead fishing above Monroe after 1985 you could catch as many as you pleased. It was lots of fun and good experiance for the novice angler that I was.

As far as earlier moldy comments its probobly why those folks are still novice fisherman. I couldn't imagine becoming a great drift fisherman without catching massive amounts of fish as it still was HOT on PS streams back in the late 80s & early 90s. Puyallup, Green, Nisqually...etc.

Slab...EXACTLY!!!! You hit the nail on the head there. Chum are great fighters and fun to target, bright ones can be great for the smoker...and to each-his-own...right? It is a shame that our run has been crippled by poor management, heck I didn't even start salmon fishing until 2001, and early on I knew what a gem we had with our chum run. Thank you for sharing!

WDFW has established an average escapement of 40,000 chum for the Stilly/Sno. Systems for the past 3-4 years.

Whether 40,000 it is right, wrong, or indifferent in one’s mind for escapement, there is no reason that a commercial chum season should be the only game in town according to commission policy C-3608. If there is going to be a commercial season, then a sport allocation should be in order with that established or higher chum escapement.

Not trying to argue that...I totally agree...BUT...
When I contacted the WDFW about this issue two years ago, they said it was common knowledge that the WDFW manages Chinook & Coho for recreational priority, and Chum, Pink and Sockeye for commercial priority...I would love to hear any feedback on this...this is excactly what I was told by a Region 4 WDFW employee.

Here is the policy:

http://wdfw.wa.gov/commission/policies/c3608.html

The PS pinks changed last year to meaningful opportunity for sport and commercials.

The majority of harvest goes to the commercials with chum harvest, which doesn't mean all for them and 0 for sports, like has happened in the past two years.

The commission and NOF staff knew of this, so maybe the change before the commission policy review at the end of this year.

I discussed this with WDFW at the Mill Creek NOF meeting.

They seem to think they had 28,000 chum return last year, this is an extremely optimistic number, it was actually worse than prior years when they estimated 16-18,000. The escapement is set at 28,000 and they predict 38,000 to return, and the tribe wants to have a fishery on those 10,000 surplus paper fish. WDFW agreed to split the take at 5,000 for each (tribes and sporties), they feel there will be no more than 1,000 or so retained by the sporties, leaving 4,000 more than if the tribes were allotted all 10,000. Nets tend to catch every paper fish they are allotted and then some, so splitting it is a good idea to save more fish.

There is a problem with the current system of allotting the paper fish to each user group, if the sporties can’t show they can catch the number of fish they have been issued the tribes can petition to take the difference. This is an issue with the Baker Lake Sockeye fishery. Each group was allotted approximately 15,000 fish, the tribes came very close to that number, the sporties only landed around half of their share. This is why the lake will open earlier this year and why they opened a section of the river. If we can’t show we can harvest our share the tribes can possibly take them. Which means fewer fish will be put in the lake, in turn we will catch fewer fish (there is no way to catch 100% of the fish put in the lake), which could lead to the tribe taking even more fish., remember every paper fish must die. They also allotted “0” escapement for the Sockeye in Baker Lake, the tribes and WDFW couldn’t agree on a number, the tribes wanted around 1,500 and WDFW wanted more than 3,000. WDFW knew the sporties wouldn’t be able to catch all the fish in the lake, so they left the number at zero and just counted on what we didn’t catch to be the escapement. This means the total escapement came from our portion, the tribes contributed nothing.

Here is the problem with opening it for retention of chum on the Sky.

There are now very few fish that spawn below the Sultan river, the vast majority spawn in the next couple of miles up river from there. This section of river has very good bank access right on the prime spawning habitat. Opening it for retention will permit people to stand over the fish every day and yank them off the redds. Even if they don't keep any these fish will be mercilessly pounded. The result will be each fish being snagged numerous times per day, even if no fish are retained there will be very little chance of them spawning successfully.

Opening it only down river from Sultan wouldn't cause many issues, most of these fish are just traveling now and there aren't many places where you can stand over a redd and repeatedly snag the same few fish. The lower river had very good numbers of spawning fish until the over netting of the recent past, now very few spawn there. The netting opens mid Oct, so the early chums that spawn higher were already in the river, the lower river fish that return slightly later were wiped out several years in a row, plus we had a couple of big floods.

One other problem is the bio’s thought they had the chum returns figured out pretty well, that is until something changed and their formulas to predict the return failed miserably. By the way, they continue to use those formulas and that’s how they figure 38,000 will return this year.

Rotten Chum,

Disagreement and healthy debate is a good way to spread information. Demanding proof that a run is healthy before allowing any fishing is a demand to put yourself out of the guiding business. Smalma and I have described many times in this forum that fishing seasons are based on predictions, or forecasts of what the runsizes will be. The only time we have proof of what the runsize number is, is after the run has occurred and the fish have spawned and been counted. Fishing before the salmon are spawned and dead is necessarily based on the informed speculation of runsize forecasts. If you disagree with this, please describe how sport fishing on chum or other species can occur while having proof that the run is healthy. Using a time machine would work, but you know that is not a real answer.

Sg

We are talking about several problems.

1) escapement
2) A sport season needed if there is a commercial season with a realistic escapement.
What ever that would be.

This is a copy and paste from last Dec. of what I posted on here.

#727423 - 12/22/11 12:39 AM Re: The annual (lack of) Chum thread.
Lucky Louie
Spawner

WDFW has allowed overfishing of chum on the Snohomish and Stilly stocks in the salt and rivers.

2007 (235K Est.run size)-(192,400 commercial catch)=42,600 without sport catch deducted..

2008 125,100 - 84,500 =40,600 without sport catch deducted

2009 37,700 - 8600 =29,100 shouldn’t have been a season for either commercial or sport.

2010 91,000 - 53,800 =37,200 escapement closed sport season

2011 71,300 8D was open ????? closed sport season

Prior years had escapement of 370k, 280k, 277k, 150k, 119k, 94k, 40k, and 40k not in order and rounded off without sport catch deductions.

It appears that there is a history of overfishing on the Snohomish Stilly chum stocks lately and in earlier years.

With a cut to commercial take, the Snohomish and maybe the Stilly stocks could still be open for sport fishers like policy C-3608 states. Policy C-3608 needs to be reviewed for chum.

The unfortunate truth is that commercially harvesting 75% of the entire run is not "overfishing" if the resulting escapement is sufficient to meet the escapement goal...since chums are prioritized for commercial fishers, the biggest "mistake" the managers could make would be to not harvest right down to the escapement goal.

Personally I think chums are a lot more valuable rotting in the rivers than they are in commercial nets or stinking up the bottom of a drift boat.

Fish on...

Todd

Exactly, with the large commercial take there is no reason that a sport season shouldn’t have occurred on chum except in 2009 IMO.
Chums = nutrient and I would prefer them to swim up to their natal streams, produce, die and contribute to the ecosystem. Compared to hauling them in ,and chipping those sum o biches.

Demanding proof that a DAMAGED and UNHEALTHY run is in fact healthy before allowing any fishing is logical. My guide business is completely irrelevant to the topic being discussed and healthy numbers of fish on the beds are more important to me then a season on them. You ask me, "If you disagree with this, please describe how sport fishing on chum or other species can occur while having proof that the run is healthy." Here is your answer and it's simple...We have already proven that the run is unhealthy based on the last 5 or 6 years of dismal escapement...why should this year be any different. If it is different and there are a surplus of fish...great...it's not a crime to allow a few excape to the beds and do their thing...but in fact...it is a crime because that is what the state is supposed to do...make sure every paper fish dies...it's total BS...let em all spawn so we can get back the numbers we once had in the pre-2004 runs...the way we have been managing our puget sound rivers for the past few decades is failing...trade your science for common sense and we might get somewhere but you guys can't because your job is to manage the people and not the fish...and that is the problem behind all of this...