Something for a snowy day.

In an earlier thread Cowltizfisherman requested suggestions on how a river might be managed. After some thought here is something to consider; there should be something here to raise the "hackles" of everyone. Hope it provokes some thinking.

Warning - This represents my personal beliefs and clearly reflects my personal biases.

Wild steelhead escapement levels- -

Use MSH as the reference point for management with exploitation rate management for runs above MSH. The exploitation rate would be designed to achieve escapements that would range from a low of MSH to a high of carry capacity. Average escapement would be expected to be between MSH and carrying capacity. Exploitation rates might be in the 10 to 20% range; possibly higher on more productive systems.

For populations expected to return at or below MSH reference point - or in those areas without an established MSH reference point.

1) Wild steelhead release during the period that hatchery steelhead are abundant.
2) If there are no hatchery fish or after the date that the majority of hatchery fish are no longer available (spawn outs not counted) river closed to all fishing.

For population expected to return above MSH reference point-

1) Retention of wild winter steelhead allowed for all or part of the period December through Febraury, (length depending on the exploitation rate).
2) Upper half of basins closed to wild fish retention.
3) State-wide wild fish limit of 1 per year.
4) Traditional spring catch and release season allowed.
5) To fish in the spring (March, April) the angler must have not used his or her wild steelhead punch.

Steelhead hatchery program

1) Mark all fish.
2) Hatchery programs to be designed to provide fish for harvest; no supplementation programs.
3) Plant only smolts and only in May.
4) Number of smolts to be planted limited so that the spawning over-lap (fish spawning at the same time and place) between hatchery and wild steelhead be limited to less than 1%. This will be influenced by spawning times, wild fish abundance, and the harvest rate on the hatchery fish.
5) Limit smolt plants to main stem areas with good angler access.
6) Significant portion of the basin (25%) not planted with hatchery fish.

Additional regulations -

1) During open seasons in the March to November period selective gear rules (artifical lures, single barbless hooks and no bait) in effect.
2) During the March to November period catch and release for all trout and steelhead except for marked hatchery fish.

Tight lines
Smalma

I'm ceratinly not a tribe basher, but your suggestions do nothing to address the issues surrounding Natives killing natives in their nets. I believe this to have a far greater negative effect on wild fish escapement than any amount of regulatory intervention could overcome. In order to improve odds of wild fish survival fewer fish must be harvested by both the tribes and sporties.

Stlhdh2o-

The escapement reference point and total exploitation rates were meant to include tribal impacts.

I didn't address the habitat issues; attempted to do that in earlier posts. I feel those are larger issues than either the tribal or sporting imapcts.

Since this is a sport fishing site my posting was meant to focus on what we fishers are impacting and how we might manage those impacts. Lets limit the current discussion to that area.

Tight lines
Smalma

Sorry Smalma - I thought I was 'on topic' here, I'll briefly explain why and get off of your thread....

"The escapement reference point and total exploitation rates were meant to include tribal impacts."

Maybe my understanding of these two statistics is limited but, if the goal is to increase wild fish escapement and improve the health of the runs we as sportfishers can help manage our rivers by actively pursuing legislation to protect wild fish from all threats of death. My post was meant to suggest another consideration when discussing "how we might manage those impacts".

Great post Smalma

Smalma,
Can I bother you for a simple break down of the MSH?

LltCLEO -

Great question - I'll try.

First we'll consider MSH (maximum sustained harvest) and MSY (maximum sustained yield) to be the same - there are slight differences. MSH escapement point would be that point that would produce the most "harvestable" fish. That is to that point where the diference between number of returning adults from a given escapement is the largest.

An example: let's say on river X MSH escapement is 5,000 fish and they produce on the average return of 8,000 fish. The "harvestable surplus" would 3,000 fish. For the same river an escapement of 6,000 might produce 8,500 fish or a difference of 2,500. The same with lower escapements - say 4,000 may produce only 6,500 returnees or a difference of 2,500. Thus the maximum surplus on the average occurs at an escapement of 5,000. The further away from the MSH escapement point one moves the smaller the difference between the number of spawners and the adults they produce.

The other point I referred to was carry capacity. This is exactly what it sounds like. The maximum capacity of the system. It is possible to have escapements higher than carrying capacity (due to better than average survival conditions) but those escapements on the average will produce less fish than the parent escapements. Retruning to the river above if escapements over say 9,000 on the average produce less returns than the parent year and those under 9,000 on the average produce more returns than the parent year then 9,000 is the average carrying capacity.

One note - these points are dynamic and change with survial conditions. That's why they are usually qualified as "MSH under average conditions". If the habitat is a system is degraded then both the MSH and carrying capacity points are reduced.

Hope than helps.

Tight lines
Smalma

Smalma

To bad you didn't post your suggestions on the last thread ("Doomsday, what If???"). This was just the kind of stuff that I was hoping people would discuss.

I have a question that begs answering. If the state started to manage every river system for either MSH or MSY, How in the devil would they be able to know when those MSH or MSY rates were reached? I know they do it on larger river systems like the Columbia, but how could that possibly work on the other numerous smal rivers?

The only way that I could see that method working, would to have EVERY river system monitored daily. How could we do that and who would pay for doing it? Since the only current way WDFW checks harvest rates on steelhead is by checking the returned punch cards at the end of each fishing season, how would WDFW know if the MSH or MSY had been reached or over exceeded ?

Cowlitzfisherman

Is the taste of the bait worth the sting of the hook????

Cowlitzfisherman -

Another great question -

To track the status of a system in relation to MSH some measure of the escapement is needed. This can be achieved from dam counts or spawning surveys. Clearly that can not be done in season easily so generally managers would need to rely on information from recent years to forecast the likely upcoming run size.

Estimates of past exploitation requires both the escapement piece as well as an estimate of catch, this would be commereical reports, creel census, and other punch card information.

Tight lines
Smalma

Smalma

Let me understand what I believe that I have heard you say! Are you saying; WE need the "commercial reports" first, before we can establish sport harvest numbers? If that is true, then what I hear you are saying is; we need the "commercial gill netters" to tell us what's "ahead" before we can have a sport harvest? Am I hearing you right? Don't you thing that this is "putting the carriage way, way ahead of the horse"? I know that YOU do not want that, but that appears to be the option that we would be left with!

75% or more, of our smaller streams that still carry "wild native stocks" of steelhead, do not have "dams" on them do they?

Estimating the number of escapement in Washington State is, and has been, a joke! How many rivers do you know of in Washington State, have established "escapements needs"?

I wish more others would "jump-in" and make an ATTEMPT to figure out how we can turn this mess around, but people will be people, and will be writing about this when we are asking ourselves; " Doomsday, what will we do when the last one is gone ????"

Cowlitzfisherman

Is the taste of the bait worth the sting of the hook????

Cowlitzfisherman -
What I had said was that to calculate past exploitation rates both escapement and catch information is needed (that includes any commerical catches).

Total exploitation= catch/(catch+escapement).

For winter steelhead most system have established escapement goals (especially in the Bolt case area). Goals for summer steelhead isn't nearly as complete. As you may have noticed the guidelines in the case of those areas without extablished goals no retention of wild steelhead was allowed.

We'll have to diagree about the quality of the escapement information, at least in the area (Puget Sound region) I'm familar with. To count the redds main stem areas are flown in helicopter several times a sesons, med-size streams float several times a month and representative sample of the smaller streams are walked several times a month. Of all the escapement information that I'm familar with only some of the bull trout information is better than the steelhead.

Tight lines
Smalma

I'll jump in here, quickly, as I'm headed out the door.

First, fishing regulations are complicated enough as it is(and late to get printed). Your plan would be so confusing that most people couldn't abide by it it they tried.

Secondly, you can make all the rules you want, but if you don't provide ample supply of people to enforce them, they mean nothing. A lot of us hear pride ourselves on being the 'good guys', but if you start taking a head count of all the booger eating morons around during a day on the water you will quickly realize that we are the minority. I don't doubt for a second that more than one person on this board does not behave the way they act on here. Oh....my point. The only way you can possibly expect whatever rules are in place to be enforced is for the majority of the people fishing to know what they are. Making people who fish many, many streams have to read there regulations for ten minutes everyday before they grab their rod will mean that people won't read the regs.

The third point Cowlitz covered nicely. I will however add that MSH and MSY DO NOT WORK. It has been proven time and time again. The horse is not only dead, it has decayed into a small pile of very smelly, unrecognizable ****. Quit beating it, already.

Fourthly, if you are only going to allow 1 wild fish to be clubbed a year, what is the point of clubbing any of them? Back to my second point; if we are going to enforce the rules, it's up to us. Don't you think it would be infinitely easier to bust ol' buck tooth Bubba when he delivers the wood shampoo to a wild fish if everyone knew that ALL wild fish are to be released ALL the time? The only reason I can see people wanting to have open seasons on wild fish is to feed their ego, or impress their friends with a 16+ lb. catch. Just put the 38's on your pickup, and buy the pump out of that magazine already.

****, I'm late.

Sorry I don't agree, don't take it personal

Smalma-
I agreed with most of your opinions in your post which surprised me. Either you are becoming more enlightened or I am giving in... (j.k on the last statement )

Anyways, a couple questions for 'ya.

Why would you allow a kill fishery during the period of time when the most fragile segment of our wild winter steelhead are returning. We can all agree that the early component of our wild steelhead populations are all but extinct...why allow a kill fishery on these fish but not on the healthier component of the run (Feb-Apr)?? Hell, why allow a kill fishery at all?

Secondly, you mentioned that you do not support a catch and release fishery on a population that is predicated to return below its escapement goal. So what are your opinions with the Wild Salmonid Policy that allows a C&R fishery as long as the escapement is not more then 20% less then the goal?

And what are the chances of ever passing a summer bait ban? I know many fishers would throw a fit because certain rivers are experiencing heavy winter run off during June which makes it very difficult to be successful on June hatchery summer runs without eggs or sandshrimp.

Thanks again for opening up some excellent discussion!!!

Backlash2 -
Nothing personal - I hope this is about exchanging ideas and exploring pro and cons of various approachs and hopefully increase our collective understanding.

1) My "guidelines" were just that. They would serve to establish the framework upon which regulations would be decided. With cut and dry guidelines I suspect that the regulations would be no more complicated than now and likely simplier.

The "guidelines" are complex. Reread them and think about what they would mean for management. I believe there is a lot of meat there.

How would you improve them?

2) What I was suggesting was not management for MSH but rather using the MSH point to decide whether any fishing would be allowed to be direct towards wild steelhead. The objective would to achieve escapements somewhere between MSH and carrying capacity thus setting a standard higher than MSH.

What escapement do you think we should shot for??

3) If "conking" one wild fish a year is too much are you suggesting that everyone limit their catch and release of wild fish to less than 20 a year (at 5% hooking mortality 20 releases equals 1 dead fish)?

Tight lines
Smalma

Ryan -
Ah! The "grasshopper" is learning!!!
Actually since we are both passionate about our wild fish I would be surprised if we didn't generally agree.

1) Why allow the taking of any wild fish?
Actually this represents some new thinking on my part. The various wild salmonids have some innate productivity that we as a society are currently using to support such things as fishing, hydro-development, water, logging, agriculture, urban develope etc. In the salmon recouvery efforts there is a considerable push from the non-fishers to place recovery on the backs of the fishers. If we as anglers adopt a position that we won't harvest fish the rest of society will use the population productivity to support the other impacting activities. As the fish's productive falls society will then demand that fishing impacts is further reduce until fishing opportunities on wild fish will be limited to remote waters or those in parks.

I firmly believe that unless we as anglers continue to lobby strongly that portion of that productivity to used to support fishing we will lose it. We can argue latter about how to use that "excessive productivity"; whether it is for harvest or other fishing impacts. Unless your vision of the future of fishing for the average man is fishing in artifical streams for hatchery fish or in carp and bluegill ponds this issue is of upmost importance.

2) Why allow the taking of early returning wild fish? Unless we are willing to discontinue all hatchery fish and limit fish to just the months of April and May those fish will always experience a disappropriate share of the fishing impacts. Even under strict WSR those early fish would be exposed to several more months of hooking mortality than the late returns. My best shot was to provide an upstream sanctuary (no harvest all season) in the upper half of the basin.

How would you do it?

3) The 80% rule was from the Draft Steelhead Management Plan not the Wild Salmonid Policy. The WSP can be interpreted that there would be no fishing below the established escapement level; (it also can be interpreted differently).

Remember the "guidelines" were mine.

4) Bait bans in the summer? Currently there is a state law that prohibits general sweeping banning of bait. So the chance is small. With cause it can be done river by river. It is my belief that the resident rainbows are an important part of the steelhead/rainbow complex. If we are to reclaim that part of the complex then bait bans are essential.

Tight lines
Smalma

Backlash2 & RPetzold-

I tried to answer your questions. Do have answers for mine?

Tight lines
Smalma

Smalma-
I actually agree with much of what you said and really enjoyed your response to my questions.

You cleared up many questions in regards to certain management practices for me.

The reason I did not answer your questions, was that I did not notice any in your repsonse...maybe I missed them and I did, I apologize and feel free to ask them again.

...on the other hand, you may have been asking me how I would protect those early returning fish.

Sorry about the confusion...

who and what determines the carrying capacity of rivers ? and why is it that there would ever be a " surplus " of wild fish in any river ?

If river X has a return of 5000 fish and and it only needed 4000 for it's carrying capacity, so those "extra" 1000 were bonked on the head and then all a sudden it floods or you just plain ol' have your poor ocean suvival are those extra 1000 fish still actually extras ?

what happened (and no offense ) a couple hundred years ago with the fish in the rivers when there were no biologists around to manage all the runs ? how did they ever manage to get this far?

look at the runs of salmon this year . No one can deny how awsome they were . All those "extra " fish around . Then all we get is high water after high water . Mother nature taking care of its self . What would have happened if you only had an average run and fished for MSY and then it floods to beat hell. Were those fish still extra's ?

I know now that man has introduced way too many variables to ever let nature take it's course with our runs and still be able think that we would have a sustainable fishery.

What can we as fisherman do to help ? We tried to get a state wide CnR to go, but that didn't happen. We will never just quit fishing . What could we possibly do to stop tribal gillnetting ?
We all learned in the sixth grade that habitat is the key to survival . Should we be involed more with habitat restoration projects and just give up with what the state and tribes do with the runs ?

I used to think that I was the only one that did not understand or have the answers but what I am learning is that due to politics the right answers are no longer the right answers.

Smalma: Your guidelines begin to address the problems but I have to ride with RR.I just don't trust science to predict and maintain our runs.Who are we to decide what is extra.Especialy when we have nocked our runs down to barely surviving.

The problem lies with the fact that we have to use something to govern our fisheries because to go back to mother nature excludes mans intervention.Man does not work insink with mother nature which man has proven over and over again.

I do believe that backing off and giving mother nature a chance to breath is crucial to her survival.Then we can work on our management to work more closely with her.

Can any body give me a system that the MSH and MSY have worked on?A system that still has wild fish?

Well I am off to HELP some wild brood stock by putting them to sleep and clipping there little addys off...

ReiterRat-
Great questions -
The fish and the conditions in the river determines carrying capacity of the system. In Western Washington most often the factor that limits the total capacity is the amount of "over-winter habitat. That is the amount habitat that provides refuge to the small parr from our winter floods.

Certainly the safest management for the fish to allow them to reach carrying capacity as often as possible. There are many that feel we should manage at that point. Mother nature certainly did a good job of that without our help. For those who feel that the regulations are too complex this is also the simpliest to manage for. Basically it means closed waters (no fishing) - can't get any simplier than that.
To achieve carrying capacity at average or worst conditions there can not be any unnautral mortalities.

Since I'm a fisher and hope to continue to fish and assume that most readers also do I decided to put forth a guideline that would allow fishing. I also believe that the long survival of our rivers and their fish needs political advocates.
Since the latest Washington angler preference survey (often referred to here on this board) found that when asked the question of "what the daily limit of wild steelhead the anglers preferred?" 78.1% reported 1 or more. Clearly there remains a large group that wishes to at least keep the occasional fish.

The proposed guidelines for average or better conditions were designed with the MSH reference point as the minimum escapement. The exploitation rates would be chosen by review past management to see what the exploitation was under various season lengths, what the "management imprecision" -how poorly the managers have done, etc. I was my guess that typically that would allow harvest rates of 10 to 20% on most systems. It would result in escapements being consistently above MSH and may reach average carrying capacity with above average survival conditions. Management success would be achieving consistent escapements above MSH. This is much different that MSH management which generally considered any escapements above the MSH goal as failed management.

As in some trout waters it is possible that as catch and release becomes more popular that all the "allowable" mortality could be taken by hooking mortality. At that point clearly effort would need to be reduced.

You mentioned the great salmon returns this pas season. The returns to the Snohomish (Assume by your name that is your home water)the largest chinook escapement in 35 years, largest coho and pink escapements in at least World War II were truly amazing. The salmon on the Snohomish are managed for wild production and under a scheme very similar the guidelines that I had proposed. Looks to me that if you goal is to have larger escapements the proposed system would do that.

Would the escapements large enough? That would be for each of us to answer. Were do you think we should be? What would you give up to get there?

As I have mentioned many times the largest arena tht needs addressing is the habitat area. We as a society continue to use much of the systems productivity to support something other than fish.

Off to work.

Tigh Lines
Smalma