Being new to the NW, move here from north east Georgia, there seems to be a difference of opinion of what most would help the salmon population.

IMHO if just for one month there could no netting by anyone, tribe, commercial or anyone in between, and no fresh water sport fishing during spawning season that would give the fish more chance to lay their eggs and die in peace and fertilize the land as well as feed as much wildlife as possible without human intervention

Should've made the treaties for bass fishing rights. Gi llnets filled with Prespawn bucket mouths would be a sight to see

If it were only so simple........

Tugalodan is right, the fish would have a better chance at recovery if we (all) stopped killing them. But, as Larry says, it is not simple to stop the killing. It is, without a doubt, the "other guy" who is killing too many. The gillnets sweep the rivers clean, the seiners gobble up everything in sight, the recs not only catch them, the snag them, the floss them, they play with their food.

So while the solution is elegantly simple, the politics, law, and culture of doing so is damn near impossible.

No offense, but that is akin to saying if the federal government stopped all spending the deficit would go away. While it may be true, both are a lot more complex than that. Look up some of the hatchery management plans for wdfw if you want an in sight to the complexity

I think I understand, it's all about the money it's not about the fish. Seems to me one month of no netting isn't unreasonable. If it is then why not one or two days a week for the season, are crabs more important than the salmon ?

The short answer is that a specific amount, or more, of fish must die. Hatcheries, which sustain most Chinook and coho salmon fisheries in WA can be harvested at or above 90% of the return and still have enough eggs for the next generation. Anything above the egg-take needs is wastage. The co-mingled wild fish can't withstand that level of harvest and many of the harvest groups are opposed to fishing selectively.

Due to chronic overfishing, significant destruction of the habitat, and little support to deal with the basic problem of too many people and too many people who want to eat salmon, we have those hatcheries.

What may seem simple isn't really so, what month and then how do you get those parties that are legally able to partake in that fishery to forgo their rights? I see lawsuits, finger pointing and more arguments than you could shake a stick at.
There are those that would want the month taken when they don't have vacation, when there are not their specific species in the rivers,etc,etc .
With as many licenses as this state sells if we could get 10% of the fisher-persons to agree on anything we could push our Dept to do anything we wanted and I for one have worked long and hard trying to get any sort of participation as have others and still we cannot agree on much.
Join an organization that best meets your chosen agenda and work with them and get back to us next year and the next and then tell us how simple it all is.

Fishy

The OP might want to research the concept of foregone opportunity and how it might significantly undermine any effort by the State to reduce harvest of its share of specific stock(s).

And the State's obligation to co-managers to maintain harvestable fish numbers.

And the percentage of our fish harvested in Alaskan and Canadian waters.

And the amount of smolts being consumed by a variety of protected predators.

And the amount of returning adults being consumed by a variety of protected predators.

Oh, and not to forget the demand by both recreational fishers and folks in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and various Asian countries for our marine resources.

And the list goes on and on.......

Oh, if it were only so easy as the man from Georgia (at least not from CA) sees it.

It's completely unreasonable. One month of no fishing means nothing except to the few fish that happened to come in during that specific time frame.

There are multiple species with multiple genetic strains within each species that all have different run timing. Some of the populations are healthy and require no hatchery supplementation and others can't seem to survive regardless of no fishing for them (which is already the case for some).

As was stated above, the fish are a managed resource that do allow for a lot of harvest with minimal impacts to quite a few of their populations. Other individual populations would crash if you remove a hundred fish a year.

Bet he's glad he opened this can of worms.

Fishy

Crab versus salmon = apples versus oranges.

Crab being closed two days a week during the summer season (only) was in addition to an earlier reduction of the daily harvest from 6 to 5 crab in Puget Sound with both intended to reduce recreational harvest to be sure that the State's share wasn't exceeded in the least productive and/or most popular management areas. It was also an opportunity for LE to pick up lost pots.

Discussions about having different weekly recreational schedules and/or daily limits tied to area productivity and popularity was basically nixed by LE.

From a conservation stand-point the State's position on crab is that literally all legal crab can be harvested annually and still have a viable resource.

Again, crab and salmon are not comparable.

the State's position on salmon is that we can harvest to MSY, or lower (see GH and Willapa) and not harm the resource. How's that working out? Fish stocks keep getting listed. recovery isn't happening but fishing continues. Seal and sea lions and terns and cormorants keep eating fish and the populations continue to decline.

There is no one size fits all approach. Each basin is different from the other and requires a different management strategy.

Simply not fishing would imply that harvest is the limiting factor for any particular stock, but this isn't really the case with many, if not most, stocks. Every river has a carrying capacity for a species, so putting more adults than the average adult abundance on the gravel may result in some benefits but it will not necessarily result in a larger population fish. The exception to this would be chum or pinks where their populations are not necessarily limited by in-river resources. The overwhelming majority of rivers are currently at their carrying capacity unless access to spawning and rearing areas are blocked or partially restricted below by human structures or natural barriers.

Many stocks in the PNW are heavily exploited and maintain stability, but it goes without saying there are severely depressed stocks that cannot tolerate harvest and every adult back to the gravel counts.

Increasing salmon and steelhead populations in the PNW will require drastic environmental policy change from the local to federal government that will require everyone who lives here to change their way of life. Few are prepared to do what really needs to be done to protect the environment and anadromous populations, so we'll keep putting bandaids on the hemorrhage and point fingers at hatcheries and harvest.

"There is no one size fits all approach. Each basin is different from the other and requires a different management strategy. "

sure there is... human extinction.

the fish will be fine after we are all dead.

That is a interesting way to look at it. The fact is in our state most streams are managed to MSY which has zero to do with maximum seeding of a watershed in fact the low producing streams in most basins will go pretty much to token numbers of spawners and the moderate producing streams will hang on. The higher producing tribs in our state will then on average do OK. This only as to seeding but nothing as to the web of life that powers watersheds off of species interaction and nutrients the salmon life cycle provides.

Habitat is always critical with any living creature but with salmonids it is only one leg of the stool. With reduced productivity from human activity one must reduce harvest and not go down the road that we can rebuild habitat that took 200 years to screw up. Additionally the protection of streams that have had the least human impacts or access can be ( removing blockages ) restored should be of primary focus.

Regardless of all that until everyone stops deceiving themselves that harvest, in particular marine interception for Chinook, is not the driving force on the recent rapid decline of many stocks not much will change. When we get down to the last fish we can have a lotto as to gets to catch it and then run yelling down the road it is all the habitat.

There is not doubt that marine interception plays a part in the number of adults encountered in the terminal areas, but it would be a stretch to assume trollers, seiners and the drag fleet in AK are actually reducing our populations' potentials. What happens in AK and BC is B.S., unfair, and a severe issue with a blatant disregard for ESA regulation which WE, not they, must assume the consequences. I acknowledge there are serious catch reporting issues in AK and that they do an exceptional job of catching several fold more of our PNW chinook than we do. However, we cannot solely blame them for critically low numbers of chinook.

Am I defending overzealous harvest in AK and BC or here at home? Absolutely not. I strongly believe that the troll fishery in AK needs to end entirely. Alaska's adamant policy that all chinook in AK belong to them and ESA-listed stocks don't exist within their waters will eventually bite them in the rear, but I don't expect an iron fist policy change to come into play for many more years.

If or when this happens, it still will not solve the many identified problems we have at home preventing increasing population abundance. It won't solve a massive amount of habitat lost to flood control and development, it won't solve river scour issues, it won't remove dams, it won't prevent the PNW from eventually resembling the east coast, it won't resolve persistent pollution issues, and it won't resolve poor marine survival.

Salmon and steelhead recovery is a farce and it does nothing more than perpetuate the status quo. If recovery is going to happen, it will require a new approach to habitat rehabilitation and conservation, severe restrictions of land use and development, massive restrictions on agricultural and household and industrial chemicals, harvest restrictions north of us, and countless other actions policy makers don't have the nuts to enact. Until that happens, it always makes me cringe when people call for harvest and hatchery reforms at home, because only we as fishermen and advocates of these fish suffer the consequences while everything else impacting the fish keeps marching along.

While you may be right that simply not fishing here does not address the manifold problems the fish face the attitude that "they" do more damage than "we" do is why we will never restore the ecosystems.

No one action, except probably dams, can be pointed to as causing the destruction of our fish runs. Look at the myriad of threads here. Nobody here hurts ESA fish; it is somebody else such as nets, Indians, Alaskans, Canadians, the high seas pirate netters, and so on.

I believe the problem is that there are so many issues, most of which one of "death by 1,000 cuts" that most folks can say, with a straight face, "You need to control some body else because it isn't me. If you control me, nothing will improve because my impact is so small."

The Skagit has lots and lots of gravel that goes unused....

Gravel isn't a limiting factor for any Skagit species, so of course there's always going to be unused gravel. If any and all fishing were terminated for the next 50 years, there would still be lots of unused gravel because fishing isn't the limiting factor for Skagit species either.

Sg

Then it must be the hatchery fish!!!

Yeah, because it just couldn't be the degraded habitat, right?

If it was degraded habitat the pinks, anadromous cutties, and native char wouldn't be increasing.

Again......If it were only so simple.

CM -

As you know habitat of a given river basin is quite complex and each of our anadromous species partition the habitat resulting each species developing different spawning and rearing strategies to take advantage of specific habitats. Because of those different spawning and rearing strategies it is common for the various species to have different production bottle necks.

The fact that a given species is doing well in a basin is doing well does not mean that the basin's over habitat is not degraded only that the most critical production bottle neck for that given species is less degraded.

Let's consider the case of Skagit bull trout. The key habitat for that species is cold water spawning habitats (for egg incubation) and quality juvenile habitat. In the case of the Skagit bull trout that essentially cold water spawning locations is found in the head water areas of larger basin tributaries. Fortunately for those bull trout it has been estimated that 80% basin key bull trout habitat is still essential intact (located in a national park and wilderness area. It should not have been a surprised that once harvest pressure on bull trout was relaxed that the population increased.

Contrast that with the situation for Skagit basin winter steelhead. The vast majority of the 290 miles of steelhead spawning habitat is located well downstream of that key bull trout habitat. Much of that potential steelhead habitat has been altered by man that significantly have limited the over-winter habitat (complex habitat structures) for both the fry and parr steelhead. This altered habitat limits the steelhead potential of the basin below historic levels.

Similarly habitat changes will effect each of the basin salmonids populations to varying degrees .

Curt

We have fft up what we haven't sh!t on and unfortunately with the population exploding it's never going to be the same as it was. Toss in the greed factor and that puts the nail in the coffin. I'm seriously thinking of giving up salmon and steelhead fishing after 55 years of it. I'll use my boat to fly fish the Yakima and other streams for trout and the occasional wild steelhead over there. There is still potential for solitude and even when it's perceived as crowded compared to over here it's paradise. At some point one has to say they've had enough.

Glad that Curt and Salmo have it all figured out. Does make it simpler when we only have one H to worry about.

I agree that the current state of salmon and steelhead is a result of a thousand cuts, but I disagree that only one specific action directly is or was responsible in a quantifiable way.

Diking and river channelization for flood control and the creation of lower basin farmland is one of the most significant actions that resulted in a loss of anadromous populations. The effects from diking, dewatering, and the subsequent expansion of agricultural lands and development is especially notable in major Puget Sound rivers.

The result of river modifications is directly responsible for the drastic decrease of fish production, perhaps more significantly than dams in some cases.

While flood control and dewatering of the lowlands may not have affected spawning areas for some species or stocks, the massive decrease in lower basin habitat complexity has directly affected the productivity of chinook (and other species) due to their reliance on the transitional complex between fresh water and the estuary. In just about every situation in Puget Sound, this area has vanished and so have our chinook.

The WRIA documents for Puget Sound usually contain a large amount of reading about habitat loss and the resulting anadromous population declines and are readily available with a quick search.