Whose brain child is this?

So the plan is to eliminate the hatchery production supporting all fishing inside of tokeland, then eliminate all fishing outside of tokeland.

The only place in the entire bay that the Rec fleet consistently accesses nemah and naselle hatchery chinook is outside of tokeland (aka washaway beach). Guess what, after this year, there is a 10-fold reduction in forks creek production. Nemah and nasselle fish are all that will be avialable to WB with nowhere except the river for the fleet to access them.

I thought WB was supposedly managed as a rec priority on chinook?

What stocks are we supposedly protecting with this plan?

I think the last half dozen posts missed this part...

.... the area between the blue line (current rec boundary) and the black line (new demarcation between Leadbetter and Marker 11) shall be CLOSED to rec fishing to protect depressed non-local and/or ESA-listed stocks which have been found to be impacted in appreciable numbers within this zone. The control zone shall be re-opened in-season when it is determined that these non-local stocks have moved thru and the overwhelming majority of salmon encounters in this zone are local WB-origin fish.

It was an eleventh hour surprise that was dropped on the committee just prior to the final PFMC week.

Original discussion was about simply re-drawing the boundary between the ocean (MA 2) and WB( MA2-1)..... essentially expanding the recreational ocean area and shrinking the bay. Options were to draw demarcation lines from Leadbetter Point north to:

1) the jetty (existing comm boundary)
2) marker 11
3) marker 13
4) marker 15
5) Toke Point

In the end, WDFW chose to preserve the existing rec boundary, but also create a small "control zone" with a second demarcation thru marker 11 as pictured.

Said control zone could be turned on when non-local depressed/ESA stocks are present in significant numbers, and turned off when they are not. The idea here is to ensure that the WB fishery remains directed at local (WB-origin) stock.

NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS....

...

In that sense, this is a UNIQUE rationale for creating a control zone. Typically these CZ's have been created to prevent the ocean from taking depressed local stocks as they make their way into the estuary.... as in the GH control zone for chinook. In this case, the WB control zone is being invoked to minimize the bay fishery's encounters with non-local ESA-listed CR stock which was NOT previously being accounted for.

If this is about CR chinook, then we have a real problem as your prioritizing a non-selective B10 fishery over a selective WB fishery.


The fact that it was ramroded through without consideration and in contravention of the WB policy is a real problem.

Let's talk about the impacts for a sec. If one assumes that we average 500 fish in WB in that zone ( I suspect less)and half of them are wild and we apply standard mortality. We're talking about 38 fish. That's about what 4 hours worth of wild fish harvest at B10.

this is dumb.

I don't like this at all. I will have to fish the ocean, currently scheduled to be open through the third week of August, to avoid the grass on the ebb tide.

One more thing. Who will sample the area in question for species and stock composition once the area is closed. Will they use a cph with three to four ounces of weight like my Uncle who plans to fly here from Kansas?