Pay attention to the changes...North of F’in

Well boys, what do you think?

New NOF

One needs to read each word carefully as there are some nice weasel-words scattered around. There is, for example, a large gulf between recovery, sustainability, and meeting ecosystem needs. Some of the listed goals are pretty low-bar.

One thing that needs to be added is something along the lines of "The List of Agreed Fisheries includes all fisheries that are agreed-to." I say this because some of the rec river closures this year weren't listed in the LOAF, even though WDFW used the "this was agreed-to at NOF" as the justification for the e-regs.

Interpretation:

Things are about to get even worse for sport fishers. Knew that before I read it.

No Changes to the following, until WDFW meets all required guidelines....

Grays Harbor Model , Effective Date 3/01/14......Foot dragging going on


POLICY NUMBER:
POL-C3621
Supercedes:
N/A
Effective Date
March 1, 2014


Termination Date
December 31, 2023
See Also:
C-3608, C-3619
Approved by:
/s/ Miranda Wecker
Fish and Wildlife Commission Chair

No, no, no. Everybody knows that organizations are always making plans. They look good holding down bookshelves. No plan is ever intended to be implemented; it is there as a wish list for how we'd like to do things. Then (in the case of WDFW), money is insufficient, conditions change, the Ocean crashed, we have a new focus and direction since the election, and so on.

In the newly proposed changes to the NOF policy, there is this interesting change. I'm wondering if someone with some insight can explain just what is being proposed here:

First, this line:"Puget Sound-origin sockeye will be prioritized for recreational fishing opportunity"

Then this: "For fisheries directed at Fraser River-origin chum, pink, and sockeye stocks, the majority of harvest will be provided to the commercial fisheries."

And then this which is lined through meaning it will be deleted:

For fisheries directed at Lake Washington sockeye, the first 200,000 non-treaty harvest will be provided to recreational fishers. If the allowable non-treaty harvest is greater than 200,000, commercial harvest directed at this stock may be considered.

What the heck does this mean as far as Sockeye, recreational fishing and who is actually getting the fish?

It means they spent millions on a new hatchery that won’t likely ever provide any recreational sockeye fishing opportunities.
The only people fishing them will be the tribes.

As long as they keep the current number of fish needed before a Lake WA opening, don’t expect to fish sockeye.
SF

It means that there won't be a commercial NI fishery on LW sockeye. Of course, since the run is tanking, there likely won't be any fisheries but the recs get 100% of nothing. Plus, the money spent on the hatchery was City of Seattle Mitigation monies.

The intent, now, is that Baker, Lake WA, Sutherland, and Cushman will be prioritized for NI sport.

Fraser origin pink, chum, and sockeye will continue to be commercial priority. One needs to watch Fraser fisheries because if they ever fish Early Stuart in the Straits, that will hit Lake Washington and Baker sockeye. The sockeye and pink fisheries will also hit the PS pinks, but they would be "incidental". Given the slight timing separations, the early pink harvests are where PS stocks get hit.

Fishing in 7 and 7A ( the commercial areas) is a way to strongly minimize interceptions of PS stocks.

Forgot those were mitigation $$$ for the hatchery.
Regardless of where the money came from for the hatchery, people shouldn't get their hopes up for Lake WA recreational sockeye seasons in the future.
SF

Sockeye thing is interesting. I figured it miggt be a consolation prize for eliminating the recreational chinook fishery once and for all. Sounds like it would be a pretty lousy consolation prize, though.

You guys are close but I feel slightly off base.. Area 7 is going to by and large be closing permanently due to the SRKW sh!tstorm, so they are saying "No recs will be fishing on northbound fish, but commercial fisheries will still remain above the law"

And I would imagine that adding the language about PS Sockeye is a distraction so that when they wipe out the Norther Straits fisheries they will offer the HOPE of inside sockeye fisheries as a "carrot", but we all know those runs will under-escape annually so there will never be a surplus deemed fishable. But hey THEY TRIED! Right?

I entirely agree with this Flea. I think you're on the money here!

Just watch the current political process. Distract/deflect. WDFW can learn some things.....

Puget Sound won't be the only $h!tstorm at NOF. Storm clouds are brewing over the BIG river to the south

The Commission will be taking public comment on the CR Policy this weekend as gillnet sympathizers attempt to bring more of these curtains of death back to the main stem Columbia.

Additionally, ESA constraints on sagging upriver spring and URB/SRW stocks are likely to put a major damper on in-river opportunities for the rec angler. This could be very acute in the fall chinook fisheries where the DFW's have exceeded ESA impacts on URB/SRW two years running. Expect NOAA-F to intervene with a heavier hand for conservation in 2019.

https://www.ifish.net/board/showpost.php?p=15867217&postcount=167


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Wait for the push to buy licenses as gifts or to get one early.

2019 will be an add year and that means PINKS. There will be no mention of forecasts but stories of folks catching lots of pinks in the bays and rivers in the past. There will be lots of "summer salmon season" and "tuna off the coast" and "halibut" and "lingcod" and so on. All the potential fisheries. No detail, so there can be no promises. Razor clams! Crabs!.

There was a huge crash in escapement in 2015 and the subsequent outmigration for fry in 2016 for Pink Salmon throughout the sound. 2017 was HORRIBLE for returns and fisheries. It was a real struggle and I think the state should have really reined it in on fishing opportunities for pinks that year, but of course they never did. I think we can expect to see less than 50% of our average escapement numbers for Pinks to PS in 2019.... it's going to be another very slow Pink season. Coupled with Coho cuts existing and coming and I think even meaningful Pink fisheries are in trouble for 2019.

It will be interesting to see what happens with PS coho as far as forecasts and season in 2019.

2018 coho fishing was decent (at least for me) considering those fish were coming off the small fish and blob in 2015.
2016 started out great with some of the biggest July coho I'd seen, but everyone pretty much got to sit on the beaches or docks after August 15th or so in MA 9.
SF

I wonder what was traded to get 100% of zero lake Washington Sockeye?

It's just a PR move. The distraction/switch the talk. "Look, we made LW sportive priority". Then, we don't look at losses in marine waters or other freshwaters.

LW sockeye have always been, since the sports figured out how to catch them, a rec priority. The NI nets came in only when the share was too large for the recs to get it all. This was true in the early 80s because the methods used then were nowhere near as effective as what was developed more recently. The fishery used to be weeks long and died when Interest did, not when the share was taken.

No matter how much was spent at Landsburg, the math said, at the very, very best, that the berzillion dollar hatchery would add, at most, one or two seasons every twenty years.

Talk about a colossal waste of money...especially considering the "at the very best" is far from where it has been, and it has added exactly "zero" fishing days.

The only way to have a consistent LW Sockeye fishery is the drastically lower the escapement goals. The bottleneck in LW is not the amount of smolts being produced, it's that there isn't nearly enough food in LW to support an increase in sockeye numbers.

Keep the goals where they are at, maybe the very rare fishery is added by the hatchery.

Lower the goals, and there will be consistent fisheries, and the hatchery will have added almost nothing to them, in terms of days or numbers.

Fish on...

Todd

No one said the opportunity had to come IN the lake. They'll just give us an A10 saltwater fishery where no fish will be harvested, and then close it up due to incidental encounters on CK and CO.

Back when there was a reasonable run of LW sockeye there were few guys who had A10 dialed in for them. To my knowledge they never gave up the secret but checkers found them to be pretty successful.

Sockeye do bite in the salt. One year the Canadian trollers took almost all of the harvestable Chilko fish. Because of the way the treaty was written these fish did not count against the 50:50 sharing and the only thing that made it to Convention Waters was the escapement. The Canadians are much better trollers, if you goal is to catch fish, than the US guys. In addition to sockeye they could do pretty well on chum, too. Plus the occasional 1,000 coho day.