Anglers want answers to Skagit steelhead issues

Anglers want answers to Skagit steelhead issues

SEDRO-WOOLLEY — When will local fishermen be able to fish for steelhead in the Skagit River? What can be done about the closure of the Marblemount winter steelhead hatchery? Can the program be reopened using local stock instead of an imported species?
The majority of questions raised at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Puget Sound hatchery workshop Thursday centered on the 12-year closure of the Skagit .... http://www.goskagit.com/all_access/angle...9242532126.html

I was at this meeting and noticed one glaring fact. The entire subject of the evening was "harvest" related. The days of harvesting steelhead may well be over for the highly populated Puget Sound area.

Habitat destruction and modification for human enterprise has reduced the carrying capacity of the Skagit system. However, the numbers of returning wild Steelhead to the Skagit are more than sufficient to support a well run Catch and Release season similar to the one that was in place before the ESA listing.

At the meeting, one of the attendees asked who he could talk to about getting some kind of fishing season back. He didn't get the proper answer so I'll give it to him here. Go to Olympia and ask the WDFW Commissioners. They are our advocates and the ones that can prepare the way by completing a basin specific management plan for the Skagit system. That is the first step for removing the Skagit from the Puget Sound ESA listing.

Although much of Puget Sound is in trouble, the Skagit is performing well and according to a study by those in WDFW the chance for Steelhead extinction in the system during the next 100 years is 0%.

In the spring of 2013 I tried to get the Wildcat Steelhead Club involved in our pursuit to remove the Skagit from the Puget Sound listing and restore our catch and release season. I was told, by the president of the club, that they did not support catch and release steelhead fishing on the Skagit.

It seems kind of ironic that they fully supported, and participated in, a catch and release program that released fish to the hatchery in a failed brood-stock program, but are against releasing them to reproduce naturally.

It is time for all sport anglers to put aside their differences, unite in a single voice, and advocate for what little sport fishing we may have left.

Respectfully, an Occupy Skagit supporter.

OS2015!

At this point, fighting for the continued harvest of steelhead while being against CnR is an extremist position. Doing this while plenty of salmon harvest (meat) is still available makes it even more incomprehensible.

Anglers who want to harvest(kill) steelhead also CNR. Anglers that CNR also harvest(kill) steelhead.

You can talk about habitat and population all day and it is a good discussion, but until you get the nets out, you are screwed on the mighty Skagit.
CNR is a joke when you have net not practicing CNR.

Nets are a reality that is not going to go away - no matter how much whining is involved.

In spite of the netting, the spawning numbers were over 9,000 this past spring. That number is more than plenty to conduct a C&R season.

In today's world, you get the fishery you fight for! Or, you go down the road kicking rocks...

This is the exact kind of mentality that is the driving force behind continued deleterious commercial harvest practices.

Although a decision has been put forth allowing continued harvest of 50% of the stocks, it says no where in this decision that non-selective, outdated, dangerous, and harmful practices should be employed to deliver that 50%.

We live in an era of "co-managment" and it is our job to voice the concern, and the commissions job to drive the concern onto the doorstep of the tribes (who are a mix of tribal, and non-tribal interest parties). In the long run, it comes down to the tribal harvest managers to change the rules and regs for their people; the driving force being the extinction of their coveted resource. Half of nothing is nothing. We all know this.

To accept that nets are a "reality that will not go away" is a weak a$$ argument, and is a total cop out for the responsibility that we ALL share for the resource, tribal and non.

Good luck changing that. And even more luck enforcing no nets if alternate means are employed.

It would be nice though.

Even just removing nets from the RIVER is feasible. That alone would be a vast improvement over present practice.

No nets? No. How about SELECTIVE purse seining?