Goal: to provide for the preservation of wild salmonids in the mid and lower columbia basin while providing both harvest opportunity and quality fishing opportunity in the Washington state tributaries. Also to maintain a tribal fishery.

Section 1.. Mouth of the columbia to Longview.

Grays river: Cease all hatchery plants and close the Grays river salmon hatchery. Move salmon production to the Elochoman hatchery and the Abernathy fish technology center.
Allow catch and release angling for Winter steelhead December 1- March 15th with selective gear regulations. All other species cloed.

Justification: the grays river has a reasoably healthy wild winter steelhead population but unhealthy fall salmon populations ( particularly chum and coho) as well as sea run cutthroat. This would allow some sport angling opportunity in the lower columbia for winter steelhead while not eliminating harvest opportunity.

Elochoman river:
Opperate this river as a supplement to the Cowlitz as primarily a harvest fishery. Open for the retention of all unclipped fish of any species year around with no restrictions on gear types. A late winter steelhead run should also be established either from wild broodstock or from late cowlitz stock winter steelhead to extend the normal winter run season

Mill creek: closed to all angling no hatchery plants.
justification: very little angling pressure on this tiny stream anyway...

Abernathy creek: Allow harvest of coho and chinook but the main purpose is to support commercial harvest

All other columbia tribs closed to angling no hatchery plants.

Cowlitz river: Maintain entire system as it presently exsists with the exception of the South toutle In which we suspend summer steelhead plants and set regs as catch and release of all unclipped fish and selective gear regulations.. Move hatchery plants to the Cowlitz main stem.

Justification: maintain a healthy waterched within the Cowlitz basin while providing opportunities for sport fishers and the harvest of strays: closed March 15- June first

Kalama river. maintain as it presently is with a transition from out of basin hatchery stocks to wild brood stocks. eliminate the lower seasonal fly only water but maintain the upper fly only water.. From Kalama falls hatchery to fly only boundary will be selective gear regs.

North Lewis: maintain as it presently is

East lewis: end plants of summer and winter steelhead and coho. This river is to be a wild fish sanctuary. Open with catch and release regs except for clipped hatchery strays. selective gear regs closed to all fishing march 15- june1. Move hatchery plants to the North Lewis. Closed year around if CnR is determined to be a problem for restoration efforts.

justification.. this river represents the best opportunity to restore wild salmonids in the lower columbia and every opportunity should be taken to see it restored.

Washougal river:

Maintain as it is with the ecxeption of the creation of a rearing pond/ adult collection facility on the lower river. This will give anglers more opportunity to harvest the quickly moving hatchry fish and keep the upper river reletively clear of hatchery fish.
Also a rearing pond/ adult collection facility is to be established on the main stem columbia for fall chinook and coho these will benefit commercial fisheries and sport fisheries in the Columbia while eliminating the huge snagging problem on the Washougal. ( ok so i am grinfing an axe here)

Wind River.. eliminate the spring chinook fishery and close it to all angling. In addition dismantlle the fish ladder at Shipherd falls to eliminate hatchery strays and create a wild steelhead sanctuatry. if in time the run rebounds a catch and release selective fishery may be considered.
Also spring chinook production moved to Drano lake and the Big white salmon river. so as not to impact harvest opportunity.

Little white salmon ( drano lake) keep as it is but with increased production from the wind river.
White salmon river plant the river below condit dam with Summer steelhead , coho and fall chinook from the Klickitat river

Klickitat river:
eliminate hatchrery plants of coho summer steelhead and fall chinook. All of which are non-native to the syetem, moving their production and planting to other facilities.
Maintain hatchry plants of spring chinook but keep them Low in the system via rearing pond and adult capture facilities.. Also dismantle the fish ladder near fisher hill bridge. Allow only the harvest of stray hatchery summer steelhead Above the fish ladder. selective gear regulations

Justification: the Klickitat has one of the ONLY wild summer steelhead runs that is in good shape. everything should be done to maintain this as a high quality experience as well as a good fishery. The only species native to the system are summer and winter steelhead and spring chinook.

Anyway here is my cheezy idea of a plan. it'll never happen I know that but i think such a plan would be fair to all and effective in maintaining and restoring wild runs

Rob, I don't know who you think this plan is fair to. Maybe CNR steelhead fishermen. maybe.

It sounds like you're asking a bunch of salmon fishermen to sacrifice opportunity so you can have your vision of good steelhead managment.

I think if you want good CNR wild steelhead fishing in the future, your time would be better spent dreaming up ways to improve the habitat, rather than cater the sport regulations and hatchery plans to suit your needs.

Just my $0.02

geoduck

Fist of all I think the most important ones to be fair to are the fish..
Notice in my plan I did not eliminate any harvest opportunity or even lower the number of fish produced.
Under stand that right now the system is totally unfair leaning way to far to the do anything you want kill anything you want side.

I assume your biggest objection is to the elimination of the Wind river spring chinook fishery??
I know this is a hypothetical but help me out here and offer some alternatives. if you think i go too far to the oppisite side of where we are now help me find the balance.

My hope is that exersizes like this may help us form some common ground that maybe some day we will get to use.

How about this.. use a net pen at the mouth of the wind river to raise spring chinook and maintain the fishery at the mouth and still keep the uper river free from the non native fish?

Also I understand your concerns about habitat but that is a seperate issue and by the way there is a ton of habitat work being done down here in southwest washington.

I think I can see Utopia from here!

Rob..I am trying to be open minded here. Suppose a new law was passed that said you must buy a permit for $10,000 to fish selective rivers. Say the ones you hold near and dear. Then we take some of those funds and hire police forces to patrol the rivers handing out tickets costing $10,000 to anyone caught fishing without the special permit. This would really restrict fishing to a select few and create a great experience for those who could afford it. That plan would protect the fish in those rivers big time.

Silly? Unfair? Well it is a plan that is narrow and of benefit to the fish. It is probably unfair and would start a firestorm of criticism that would center around the unfairness and bias towards the rich. So if that is the case we could change the plan to allow fishing on these rivers by permit only ($10,000 fee to be paid by DSHS) making the permit only available to the homeless...No bias towards the rich in that plan....

Bottom line is this: Any plan with a chance has to be inclusive and somewhere in the center. That means the dreaded compromise word. Compromise is tough when emotions run so high. That is where our fisheries are now...we are struggling to come up with plans that are inclusive and strike a balance between user groups. Unfortunately the loudest voices (lobbyists) seem to attract the most attention. So some go to the courts to try to force their views on the rest of the users. The same thing is happening across the country politically. A minority is turning to the courts to ramrod an agenda that is in the minority. The majority is getting pissed off though. An example is the fact that 95% of Americans celebrate Christmas while the extreme minority is going to the courts to stop observance of that holiday...Ultimately the majority will have to be reckoned with.

Come up with a plan that is inclusive and it may have a chance. One inclusive plan that is closer to what you advocate would be to close all river fishing period. That would piss off everybody but it would not favor the C&R or the catch and keep crowd. It would, however, force us into courts as defendants against the tribes ..who in the end rule our fisheries.

OK..now I have to get ready to go fishing today....

PS..thanks Rob for sticking to your guns and articulating your opinions without ranting...We'll keep working on this issue and I think it will ultimately be resolved.

There's the Grandpa that I know - the voice of reason!! I spent some time with the incoming president of Trout Unlimited (Washington State) yesterday. He feels that because of the low prices for fish that we have the best chance in a long time to really make some change. But, Grandpa is right - compromise will need to happen in order to make progress. Incremental change is better than no change at all.

grandpa.. Help me out here.. what are some changes you would make o this plan??

Also please understand that there is not one selective fishery in all of southwest Washington except for the fly water on the Kalama. And that there are huge hatchery plants in every single river! I don't know about up there but down here in terms of hatchery managment and distribution of fishing opportunity we are totally unbalanced to hatchery/ harvest regieme.
What i am saying is that any changes made have to be consessions on angling opportunity andhatchery plants as the other side has nothing at all to give. it has been taken away by the Hatchery/ harvest side of things.

put it in monitary terms
hatchery harvest has a million bucks
wild fish/ selectivegear has absolutely nothing not a penny.
Thats an accurate portayal of how things are down here..

Rob

Why do you think that they have such large hatcheries on the Cowlitz and Lewis?

Didn't the fly fishers get a rule pasted not that long ago that will make the South Fork of the Toutle "fly fishing only" in the year 2006 or so?

Cowlitzfisherman

Cowlitz.. not that i am aware of... i'll check the regs but I never heard anything about that.. Anyway It wasn't my intention to create selective gear fisheries it was to maintain fisheries that otherwise would be totally closed.

Also secective gear regs do not eliminate people from fishing any certain waters only their choice can do that. Plain and simple single barbless no bait has segnifigantly lower hooking mortality that barbed, trebles or bait.
there fore if you are going to have a fishery on a species that needs some protection selective gear is the way to go.. It doesn't make it exclusive it makes maintaining a fishery an option. Selective gear is actually an increase in angling opportunity!

personally, i believe all flyfishing-only rules should be abolished completely and turned into selective gear only. i believe it's elitist and selective gear would have no negative impact

Grandpa,

You sure are articulate at 4:00 in the morning! I couldn't even turn on my computer until I've had a second cup of coffee, which never happens until a bit later than that. Thanks for your post; it's one of the better pieces I've read here. I agree that where there are choices to be made that allow fishing, the closer a proposal can land near the center, the higher the likelihood that it will be adopted.

I must also agree that this was one of Rob's more embracing suggestions when contrasted with his common "everyone who disagrees with me is wrong!" position statements. I do sympathize with him because SW WA hasn't had much focus on wild salmon and steelhead when compared to the coast and Puget Sound rivers. The SW situation was decades in the making, and the Columbia River dams were the primary cause. The easy way out was to place all bets on the hatchery line, and it seemed to work for a while. The massive hatchery rivers supported immense commercial and recreational fisheries until the hatchery solution began imploding upon itself and the ESA listings came along.

I think Rob has a good basic concept with regard to restoring naturally reproducing and sustaining fisheries in the river basins that have the best potential to achieve wild fish success.

Consider that much of the lower Columbia tributary hatchery production exists to do two things: 1) mitigate losses associated with dams; 2) support commercial fisheries that have or are becoming economic, social, and conservation anachronisms. A lot of that hatchery production could be eliminated without affecting sport fishing if we are able to close those commercial fisheries that no longer serve society's needs, like the lower Columbia River gillnet fishery. That, of course, isn't going to be easy, but economics and conservation forces could help make that happen over time - the incremental change that another post mentioned.

Rob's proposal isn't workable as it stands, even if it makes perfect sense to him. However, it works for me as a starting point for constructive dialogue. His concept of separating hatchery based and natural production based fisheries as much as practicalbe is an excellent idea when considering the conservation ecology layer and even the social layer. It begins to get more complicated when we overlay the legal layer, specifically the ESA - that's the least flexible layer in this mix of ideas. But I do think it's possible to restore natural production fisheries in several of the SWW tribs, and Rob's included those in his suggestions.

As much sense as it might make to him and others to write of the Cowlitz and N. Lewis to massive hatchery whack 'em and stack 'em fisheries, their are two federal laws - at least - that force some of us, like CFM and me, to try and restore natural production to the upper Cowlitz and N. Lewis in a mixed fishery that will include natural salmon and steelhead production as well as perpetual hatchery production to mitigate for unavoidable effects of those rivers hydropower systems. Increasingly, it appears that it can be done, and we're adapting. Well, some of us are adapting faster than others.

I just wanted to respond to this thread because the sincere attempts at a voice of reason seem to be present. That's a refreshing change worth noting.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Cowlitz

BC scientists have published a study that is much more comprehensive than the WFDW study which indeicates a clear relationship between barbed hooks and mortality..

Salmo G. Thank you for your statements. My intent with this thread was to start such a discussion to determine what might be acceptable as a compromise between angling grouos.

Chum man.. take a look at the very few flyfishing only waters and tell me that flyfishers are being given any kind of favor. Not disagreeing with you I just think that you'll find that the fly only waters that do exsist are not good or even productive fisheries. The lower fly water on the Kalama I don't know what thats about or where it came from but it certainly is a waste of space in the regs pamphlet in my opinion..

All I know is the fish I catch are in better shape if I use one or two barbless hooks... as opposed to any number of barbed hooks.

Any plan you come up with is dead in the water until you all agree to release all wild fish in all your rivers... without that simple rule... you bring nothing to the table that the tribes and commercial fisherman can't throw back in your face... its all talk from you guys... always a plan.... never a vote.... Totally amazing ..

Ya think?????

B-run I agree no one should be killing any wild steelhead anywhere. However there is strong opposition to that among a very few sportsmen in Washington state and WDFW very often listenes to one voice in favor of killing fish than 100 opposed. WDFW is a massive advocate for harvest anywhere anytime..

You know what they call a wild steelhead that spawns in a river exceeding it's escapment goal?? WASTE.. That says it all.

Rob,

We agree on lots of things, but I think you're wrong on your last statement regarding fly-only waters.

Write me up a quick list of rivers or parts of rivers where a flyfisher is not allowed to flyfish, at any time during the year.

Now write me up a quick list of rivers or parts of rivers where only flyfishers can fish, at any time during the year.

Seems to me, without seeing your lists, that flyfishers are never restricted from fishing anywhere during any open season, for any fish.

Others are restricted in gear types, however.

Stating that the only fly-only waters that exist are poor producers or poor fly waters, which I definitely do not agree with, just brings it back to your original point regarding selective fisheries...if someone chooses just to flyfish, then that's their choice. It's the same as you pointing out that selective gear rules don't kick anyone off the rivers, unless they choose to not participate.

That being said, I do agree that a lot of fish runs would benefit from more selective gear seasons. Though I'm mainly a bait fisherman myself, I choose to fish selective gear areas/seasons quite a bit, too.

As far as adult fish go, studies show that bait has little or no effect on release survival, while barbs do have a significant effect.

Juvenile fish, however, have pretty high mortality from both.

As long as we have some fish runs in depressed states, we need to protect their juvenile populations, too, with selective gear regs where appropriate and necessary.

Fish on...

Todd.

Todd

You may be right

I don't spend any time in any flyfishing only waters in Washington. however i don't know of any that are touted as highly productive fisheries. but then i always forget about the North Stilly.

I know the upper kalama ff water is not productive and the lower kalama FF is a snagfest ( wal-mart sells out of fly gear when that opens)

Is the Hoko productive?
or the upper Hoh in the park?

ALl i meant by my statement is that it doesn't seem like non fly anglers are missing that much.

B-run..not sure what you mean by "no vote"....plans are just that...plans...ideas...negotiating tools. When all wild fish are easily distinguishable from hatchery fish I think releasing all wild fish will be a reality. Salmo brought up the word : "mitigation" which is an important word. It is a bandaid of sorts to pay back for screwing up something. Lots of mitigation going on.