I understand closing the Nisqually for chums.
With steelhead fishing being closed since 1993, what gamefish would people be targeting in December, searun cutthroat?
SF

Yeah, cutts. But it is also just the knee-jerk reaction that if it needs to closed for salmon, it's all shut down.

Does make the regs simpler though, which WDFW is trying to do.

The chum, squid, and pollock all feed along the same lines, temperature breaks.

The trawls ass pays to fund canal chum take?

I did not remember that it had been closed that long........ I only fished the Nisqually River once, late 80's out of my then drift boat. I do remember the water color was that deep green and a beautiful day.

2 of us in boat, caught one small native steelhead, you could keep natives at that time, never fished it again.

Wish the problems were less on this river.....I 5 people need a river to fish, that is closer to home....

History of this river.......following is a good read...

https://voices.nationalgeographic.org/20...shington-state/

Does anybody know how well Kennedy Creek was for chum this year? I saw lots of cars there on the way by earlier in November. If nobody wants to admit they fish there, I understand.

I looked at the WDFW creel checks and in early November they were getting about a fish per rod.

While normally I am not against C&S fisheries, I think this is a little unfair. So few fish that a full closure was necessary, but only when it is convenient. You can not convince me they did not have the ability to fill their freezers with Kings and Coho and can not go out in the sound and fish for black mouth. If it has to be chum, I am sure they could trade with the Muk's, who also have a chum opener this week to get a few.

NISQUALLY INDIAN COMMUNITY
EMERGENCY REGULATION 6-2017
December 7, 2017.
IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION 14.23.02 NISQUALLY TRIBAL CODE, TITLE 14-Chapter 2, AS AMENDED BY THE BUSINESS COMMITTEE EFFECTIVE 7/31/91, THE NISQUALLY FISH COMMISSION HAS ADOPTED THE FOLLOWING FISHERY OPEN EFFECTIVE AT 10:00 AM TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2017.
REGULATION SUPERCEDED/MODIFIED: NONE
SPECIES: CHUM
FISHERY TYPE: CEREMONIAL AND SUBSISTENCE-NO SALE OF ANY KIND PERMITTED INCLUDING EGG SALES
GEAR: GILL NET ONLY-ONE NET PER FISHER
OPEN DAYS/HOURS: TUESDAY THE 12TH AT 10:00 AM CONTINOUSLY THROUGH WEDNESDAY 13TH AT 10
A.M..
AREA: NISQUALLY RIVER MOUTH TO TOM BROWN’S LOG JAM
JUSTIFICATION: CEREMONIAL AND SUBSISTENCE
NISQUALLY FISH COMMISSION
MMMM

Big surprise

Although managers move in mysterious ways, they are "stuck" with an agreed-to number that says there are some harvestable fish. Since they don't do updates (and Nisqually chum had one of the sweetest ones I've ever played with) they are stuck in a legal sense. That they agreed not to intensively fish shows concern, and they may have other indictors like lack of chum in by catch, nothing showing in early surveys.

It will also be an opportunity, and many tribes take advantage of it, to collect age, sex, and length data plus get some catch per effort data.

Soem trasparancy on the whole situation would help immensely.

Cultural heritage is important. I'm sure we all have different customs and traditions we find important, regardless of our background. I am in agreement that the tribes have ceremonial fisheries, IF the state and tribal Bios agree a very limited harvest will not harm recovery efforts.

I appreciate the fact that the tribes included in the announcement that there will be no sale of fish or eggs. This is exactly the type of transparent communication that reduces speculation and rumors.

I believe if they included the small number of fish they intend to harvest in the announcement, and it is verifiable through records or direct observation, the sport fishing community should support a culturally important harvest.

It seems that straight ceremonial harvest are most likely to include a number. The subsistence aspect of this leave the amount open. I personally talked to a couple of netters on the skok that were aiming for 6 totes from one net (set as a trap) for the day. I was there in the afternoon and they had just filled up their 3rd and 4th totes.

During the king season, the Nisqually tribe states they took over 1500 fish a day. So, while the chance of them hitting it hard is very slim, they could. A simple cap would add a lot of clarity.

Would it be overly cynical to ask about tribal oversight and enforcement?????

I wonder what crime you would have to commit to have a chum salmon ceremony held in your honor?

Keta...it's "what's for dinner!"

Sorry Chief, I'd like to attend, but I have to organize my sock drawer that night.

Check the packages of smoked salmon at the airport and other locations. Keta salmon sounds exotic as does "silverbrite" on fresh fish in the stores. It's all about marketing.

Nisqually winter chums are a completely different animal than any other chums from around these parts...besides being bigger and much brighter, they also have very dark flesh and are of a much higher quality than a lot of the boot coho being dragged home by anglers this week!

Fish on...

Todd

I agree Todd. When fishing for them years ago I remember how often people would start yelling for someone to put fish back because it had to be a different species. They had never seen a chum that looked like the Nisqually fish. That's the reason it suck's so much to loose it. In terms of water shed, the Nisqually is actually fairly good. I believe the dams are at the site of a historically impassible water fall, so no habitat was lost. Hard to say how the scouring/flood differences are postitive versus negative, though there likely is quite a bit of effect. The lower river habitat has been greatly improved in the past few years. Much better than it was previously. I took a quick look at some of the in stream water flow for muck creek, a spawning tributary, and it appears that water flows were much lower at times in the past. So what caused the sudden collapse. It shouldn't be river or estuary issues, and if Kennedy creek, Perry Creek and Johns creek are considered, then the south sound conditions should not be the main cause. Which leaves us to the intrusion of pinks, which should be a only odd year effect. Since the crisis is both years, we can limit that some. So, what's left. Mainly harvest. I can not attest to the oceanic harvest, but the returns to other hoodsport, the skoke and minter should also be collapsing. Are they. Looking at just a few years data, I can see that the sports catch in the Nisqually went from over 2000 in the Nisqually and 500 in Kenney creek (1995) to 368 in the Nisqually in 2014 and 383 in Kennedy creek.
Since the Nisqually river fish face mainly an in river harvest, I think we can start narrowing in on the problem. Either an in river habitat problem up stream that is fairly new and mostly unknown, or a continuing over harvest.
Anyone have a better answer?

For clarity were you referring to Muck creek rather than "much" creek?

Otherwise, yes!

Muck Creek used to be a prime producer of steelhead (probably age-1 smolts) and chum. It is significantly degraded due to loss of water and in-channel weed growth. Loss of that stream may be one of the prime reducers of Nisqually steelhead although there were some harvest issues.

Chum go through decadal or more productivity swings. 60s and 70s were low while 80s and 90s were high. Salmon populations were never meant, despite manager's intentions, to be consistent. Fluctuation was good for the soul.

There is something really wrong with Deep South Sound, south of the Narrows. When I was involved, the problem was with everything that smelted as a yearling or older. Problem may have expanded. Although everybody sings the praises of the delta restoration, what has happened to the chum since? Perhaps, enhancing the survival and growth of Chinook came that the expense of chum. We have certainly seen that expansions in pink come at the cost of Chinook.

I am looking for the paper, but when looking for historical data on river flows for Muck Creek, it appeared to state that it historically has always had intermittent flows and that during a period in the mid 1950's or around then the flow was almost non-existent for a period. It was a very long technical paper and I was just skimming it, but that was what I drew out of it. What makes it funny is that when looking for it I came across the Muck Creek basin plan. The first section is a summary of the plan. It states that chapter 7 is about habitat and waterflow, but they appear to be missing and not addressed. The section phase of the plan has lots of technical data about water quality but not much in the way of a summary. The water flow data mentions a historical flow problem, but gives no historical data or context. Later it goes into a grant the tribe wants that blames it partially on tank crossings on the base. Makes me wonder, given that most of the money it looks like is being spent on habitat and stream flow why there is no historical data or information and why there is no summary on these in the main paper. I don't have the time to dig much deeper, but perhaps someone knows more about it. It almost looks like the data may not support the funding, but they do not want that information out there.

A bit cynical about a lot of what is in reports. This comes out a report on fish in the Nisqually. "Upstream from the two reservoirs, LaGrande and Alder, fish are resident rather than anadromousdue to the blockage of the river by Alder Dam."
But reading in the history of the dams I find this statement ". They hold back Alder Reservoir and the inaccessible two-mile long LaGrande Reservoir. Before the construction of the dams, a natural fish barrier prevented anadromous fish from ascending the Nisqually above what is now La Grande Reservoir.[5]"
The reference does not work but that brings up a lot of questions, including why the tribe is now trucking fish above the dams and who is paying for it.