I just might attend this one.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

i like how it says..( to hear what people have to say... ) i can tell you what most people will say cut the netting schedual and quit screwing the sports fishers..

I guess that gives me a good excuse to dig out on the monthly Dept of Surgery meeting at Community Hospital.

I'll be there!

That gives us two weeks to formulate talking points on this board for some of the popular GH fisheries. I will start a separate thread for the bay, mainstem Chehalis, Humptulips, Wynoochee, and Satsop. Please feel free to add responsible ideas to the recreational wish list for each one.

If we can build a concensus on any issue, I would be more than happy to take those concerns to the meeting.

Well, that is an improvement from the other meeting:
How about no non-tribal nets on the chinook and coho!

second what slab said but no nets period. Those nets are doing a number on our steelhead right now.

With wild coho stocks recently in pretty good shape and clipped coho returns being "surplused" at the local hatcheries, the limiting factor in setting the salmon season in Grays Harbor is the number of kings forecasted to exceed WDFW's prescribed escapement goals.

I believe that a press release showing the relative proportion of kings allocated to tribal nets, non-tribal nets, and sport harvest would go a long ways in helping all of us to understand just how the pie is divvied up, and how that affects what kind of season we are able to draw up for sports.

Right now, that info is a bit hard to come by. It ought to be much more transparent and posted on the WDFW website, with an archive kept for all preceding seasons so everyone is reading from the same sheet of music whenever it comes time to craft a new season. I will lobby the local office to bring exactly such a post-season 2004 summary to include forecast run size, actual observed run size, and estimated harvests for all user groups in Grays Harbor. It will be very helpful to the success of the meeting on Feb 17.

Also without access to some preliminary run-size forecasts for 2005, it will be a little difficult for the public to give meaningful input on how we would like to see recreational opportunity maximized.

BIG NEWS:

And it ain't good, folks!

Forget about any kings this year.... ain't gonna happen as preliminary run forecasts for fall kings in the GH basin are about 3000 fish short of prescribed escapement goals.

No coho numbers released to date, but rest assured that those numbers will be the driving force in setting our season.

Our season may look a whole like 2003 in an effort to reduce impacts on chinook. Looking back at 2003 (the last time WDFW said we had a king shortage) the bay opened on Sept 16 and the Chehalis opened on Oct 1.

Not sure when the Hump opened, but I think it was Oct 16. There was a short 2 week opener for king retention there ( I remember fishing with Katosan on Nov 1 when you could no longer keep kings). That's not gonna happen this year.

The only way we can hope for earlier openers this year is if the hatchery coho numbers come in really strong. A case can be made to more fully utilize the available clipped coho.

We'll see what we can do about increasing opportunity for jacks.