Steelhead allocation

Hi guys I was just curious how steelhead allocation works compared to salmon. Since I see no year to year forecasts on steelhead like salmon. How do they know how many adults will return to a basin or a tributary to determine what #'s are harvestable?

They make a pre-season forecast for each stock and then define harvestable if there is any. It is not part of the NOF process but done later. It is supposed to be competed by a specific date that is often missed now. I don'y know the details of hatchery/wild. I think WDFW wants to have sharing as 50:50 for hatchery and 50:50 for wild. I believe the tribes aren't in agreement.

Bottom line is that the Court set a process and a timeline that is not followed and not really publicized.

Thanks for the response.

I have asked about steelhead talks for YEARS. Once the 2 agencies, merged in the middle 90's.......salmon became the main focus. NOF and the hundreds of hours spent by staff to work out agreements, was all about salmon and sturgeon.....if you even mentioned steelhead, at a NOF meeting, you were hushed up.

I have learned, when talking about Wynoochee Mitigation, at NOF, to only talk about the Coho salmon part of it.

Salmon are classified as food fish, which means white people profit from them commercially. Tribes still harvest steelhead commercially, but WDFW doesn't manage their fisheries, hence the absence of steelhead from allocation talks.

An allocation formula does exist, even if it's not formalized: The Tribes take what they want, and we can keep 2 hatchery steelhead in any place we're fortunate enough to find that many.