Cowlitz Controversies

I would like to explore in a thread here what has been happening to the Cowlitz River fishing. I have read and heard a few things, but they still don't seem to add up to why the largest sportfishing and historically most productive river in the northwest could so quickly go 'belly up' for fishing!?! What I have heard is that the NMFS, and possibly the WDF&G?, and Tacoma City Light want to attempt transforming this river from a put and take hatchery river to a C&R nate river only. I'm not clear, is this correct? If so, why would they choose a river that has one of the poorer chances to successfully pull that longshot off? I used to fish the Cowlitz years ago, primarily for winter steelhead and then a combo of springers and early summer steelhead. And it was one super productive river! The few times I've fished it lately with Oly friends it has been drearily slow; with an exception for silvers one day last fall. The reports about steelhead fishing have been terrible. While many regional rivers had terrible brat runs this season, they have had pretty good nate returns - NOT the Cowlitz! There is another poor report about the river in Chris' (dcrzfitter) "Cowlitz" fishing report request thread. So, with so few nates left, if any genuine ones at all, what are the motives to change this particular river into a 50 year native fish test-tube project that may not work? Perhaps likely won't. I know TCL's motive would be money; not having to invest in hatchery production. Thanks TCL (how about voting in de-regulation of the power industry as a "thank you TCL" jesture ). As for the NMFS, I can't understand what their motive could possibly be!?! Campaign contributions to Wash. D.C. NMFS power backers (such as from TCL, and from the NW Indian casino big money for Columbia River favors)? That is NUMBER 1 on my suspiction and educated guess list. ....

As for trying to bring back some healthy non-hatchery nate only runs in some worthy rivers, I think that would be great! There would need to be fish biologist studies to determine the proper presence of enough genuine native fish indigenous to a particular river to even start such as project, in my opinion. I doubt there are many of those around anymore, but probably a few. They would know the best candidates for that scenario I'm sure. They may not fit into the behind the scenes agenda of the power guys in the upper eachalon within the NMFS though. I would really like your opinions and ideas of what may really be going on here! .....

As for the 'Cow', it has been a top producer and fishing pressure absorber for better than half a century. It can support and produce large runs of hatchery fish for sportsmen - taking undue pressure off many other regional rivers. I don't know of any other rivers capable of doing this. The only one that comes to mind, size wise, is the Skagit; but it is much less centrally located - and among large rivers I think has more potential to bring back natives runs. I hesitate to post my opinion of good nate only river candidates on here, in case that could send the odd trophy nate kill hunter that way; but there are a number of better ones out there than the Cowlitz. ....

Also, I have heard that the Cowlitz springer return projection is the worst in that river's history; as few as 1500 this spring in one report! With upwards of a half million springers coming up the Columbia, because of such good ocean survival the last couple years, and some tribs getting very early big returns already, what does that tell us? They must have not have even planted springers in the 'Cow' for the last few years. What the hell does that have to do with steelhead policies?!? Is there some other factor there I haven't heard about?...

Whazzup?????

RT., I think you're probably right on about the politics of the Cow. That coupled with low flows has caused a dismal year for steelhead this year.
From what I've learned, there are no native steelhead in the river, only hatchery fish.
I've only been at this for a short time, but I've managed to get in front of 6 fish. Four of them were long line released by my partner, "Thumbs". I released my biggest fish ever, about 18 lbs, because I thought it might be a native. A real beaut.. At the time I was'nt really fishing for meat, so I didnt mind releasing it.
I cant speak about the springer situation, but it seems with all the fish returning to the Columbia, the survival factors have been in place for the fish. So it appears you may be right about no stocks beeing planted in the river.
Perhaps the group known as "Friends of the Cowlitz" can offer better enlightenment on the topic.
I had been under the impression that in order to dam the river as it is, Tacoma Power was to maintain and operate the hatchery program there. It appears they have not. I have been told that one year, (I dont know how long ago,) they(either the State or TPL) allowed a season's worth of fry to become diseased, and they were destroyed.
Perhaps that would have been this season's salmon.???

Howdy, Cowlitz affiliate here. I too have heard the rumors surrounding the Cowlitz and turning it into a C&R native river. I think that is hilariously stupid...scary, and very real.

I cannot agree with RT anymore on his comments about the buffer this river is for the crowds of people. The only other river that comes to my mind that could handle these kinds of crowds is the Columbia River.

As far as putting an end to the rumors with an answer, I can't do that...just yet, but I'll work on it. You didn't hear it from me, but I'm a member of the FOC. As far as information goes from that group....it greatly lacks and it really aggravates me.

You can visit their website @ www.friendsofthecowlitz.com

They just revamped the website a smidget, but it's still the same sh!tty website. The pictures have been there forever with no new picks. There isn't and never has been a President's message (Don Glaser). They used to have a link on the main page that said "president's message". Of course it was always blank.

I sent a disconcerning email to whomever receives them at the office of the FOC about 2 or 3 months ago. I got no reply back and I was very courteous for a pissed off redneck. I basically asked why the website sucked ass. Asked about why the President of the organization doesn't have anything to say, why the pictures haven't been updated (when I know Donny's store has a bazillion pictures....and I contributed to that picture peg board), how does one get to be on the Board, and why the website overall just sucks to put it lightly. I even asked for the website to be turned over to me to organize and maintain.

I got no reply back via email or phone call.

Funny twist now is this; I know they received my email. "How do you know that redneck?" you say. Well other than being psychic (freak tractor accident), I received this month's issue of the FOC newsletter. Low and behold, on the bottom of the back page it asked for people to send in pics and other things that I covered in my email.

Whomever is in the office isn't going to like my phone call I will place today, just for the BB's entertainment value. I will post what I find out....especially on how to be on the board. They don't want me to run that lil bit....muh ha ha ha ha because I'll just use my quote at the bottom of this post to their dismay.

RT,

I can’t answer all your questions, but this is one subject I can tell you that your number 1 suspicion and educated guess couldn’t be further off base.

First, why has the fishing on the Cowlitz gone gunnysack? For one thing, there are no viable wild, native stocks remaining that might be expected to exhibit some resilience as freshwater and ocean survivals fluctuate. Next, the salmon hatchery is over 30 years old and suffers from obsolesence. It produces smolts fraught with disease. Coupled with the recent period of low marine survival, adult production is miserable. The last two years, coho returns were good, due to high marine survival, not due to high smolt quality. Springer returns are up everywhere in the Columbia basin except the Cowlitz. Reason? Well, other basin hatcheries are turning out healthier smolts at a size closer to that of wild smolts. The Cowlitz is turning out smolts infected with BKD, IHN, and runs them through the cesspool of C. Shasta, a killer parisite that is abundant in the Cowlitz. The Cowlitz springer smolts are 2 to 3 times the size of wild smolts, yet their survival rate is dismal. WDFW doesn’t agree that rearing the smolts to the same size as wild smolts is a good idea. Yet, they raised the smolts to a smaller size during the 80s when return rates were much better. Let the facts speak for themselves. But Tacoma has suggested doing side by side experimental groups at two sizes and see which survives better.

Cowlitz steelhead returns are also dependent on nearly exclusively hatchery runs. Using genetically deficient Chambers Ck. stock and subjecting them to the Cowlitz disease mill just about guarantees poor returns unless ocean survival is exceptional. Last year, about 200 wild, native steelhead returned. That isn’t much, but you might like to know that their smolt to adult survival rate was three times that of the hatchery brats.

Now, as for the Cowlitz being the most historically productive river, what constitutes history for you? The Cowlitz was productive, but hardly a headline maker, until the hatcheries Tacoma built came on line in 1968. Prior to the hatcheries, the Cowlitz was just another productive river with good populations of wild salmon and steelhead. It was the early years of hatchery production, and the start up success that many hatcheries seem to enjoy, that put the Cowlitz on the map of headline sportfishing. As long as the hatchery succeeded and as long as ocean survivals were high, the built in deficiencies of the facilities and the concept of an all-hatchery supported fishery were effectively masked. It was a bomb waiting to go off. And it has. And we’re left with the pieces.

I cannot find anything indicating NMFS, WDFW, or Tacoma want to turn the Cowlitz into a native C&R fishery. Several things have happened. Here’s some of the story. After Tacoma completed the dams, they and WDFW found it impossible to collect and pass enough of the downstream migrating smolts to maintain natural salmon and steelhead production. In 1973 WDFW, NMFS, and USFWS agreed that Tacoma could mitigate the entire Cowlitz salmon and steelhead production through the hatchery system. After that, fish were no longer passed upstream for the purpose of maintaining production. Surplus hatchery fish were trucked upstream to Morton and Packwood to maintain some sportfishing opportunity. Any natural production that resulted was considered coincidental. In 1985 the state legislature passed a bill requiring WDFW to investigate the feasibility of restoring natural fish production above the dams. Lewis County was in the process of permitting and then building Cowlitz Falls Dam. The Friends of the Cowlitz negotiated an agreement with BPA, the purchaser of CFD energy, to provide fish passage at the new dam. They built the dam and installed juvenile fish collection facilities - that still need much improvement.

It happens that Tacoma’s operating license for Mayfield and Mossyrock dams expires next year. So Tacoma went through a relicensing proceeding over the last few years. FOC was much involved. And then during that process, lower Columbia River - including the Cowlitz - chinook, chum, and steelhead were listed as threatened under the ESA. As a consequence, neither Tacoma, NMFS, WDFW, nor any other party really has the choice of not trying to restore natural production of listed salmon and steelhead. The ESA is a federal law, and restoration, or recovery as it’s called, is required as a matter of law. Since restoration actions were planned and already under way, the ESA requirements have installed some side boards on actions, but haven’t made the kind of changes they would have if no restoration had been contemplated.

As for Tacoma’s new hydro license, there are some key points. First, the hatchery program will continue. Without a high quality hatchery, restoration isn’t possible. So Tacoma has agreed to completely renovate the salmon hatchery to a state of the art facility. The intent will be to have high water quality, low rearing densities, and smolts that will have much improved survival rates. The hatchery will not be as large as some parties wanted it to be. There are two reasons: 1) the Federal Power Act doesn’t require Tacoma to provide the fishing experience people have become accustomed to; 2) NMFS is required to place a limit on hatchery production that would work against recovery of listed fish.

Under the FPA, Tacoma is required to mitigate its project’s impacts on the fishery resources. Tacoma has agreed to a combination of hatchery and natural production (read fish passage here) that will result in as many salmon and steelhead being produced by the Cowlitz River basin as would be the case if Tacoma’s dams were not present at all. The future on the Cowlitz will indeed be different than the fishery of the past 30 years, which was 100% hatchery driven, and different still from the historical fishery before that, which was 100% wild stock. During the new license period Tacoma will provide new hatchery facilities and fish passage facilities to meet its mitigation and ESA obligations. Two things are likely in hatchery production. NMFS required a reduction in hatchery coho and fall chinook production to reduce impacts to wild fall chinook, which are listed. Hatchery winter steelhead production will also be reduced. Spring chinook production is increased, I believe, to assist restoration or recovery. Hatchery production may also be reduced in some phased sequence while all the renovation takes place. WDFW will maintain as much production as possible during the transition, but the details are not worked out.

As for opinions and ideas about what’s going on here, why not just verify? The web address for Tacoma is www.ci.tacoma.wa.us/Power/ The license settlement agreement is in there somewhere, and the facts are mostly available. I think much of the problem here is that people’s perceptions and expectations don’t line up with reality. You say that “ . . .it has been a top producer and fishing pressure absorber for better than half a century. It can support and produce large runs of hatchery fish for sportsmen - taking undue pressure off many other regional rivers.” First, 30 years isn’t half a century, but I get your drift. What made it a top producer? The world’s second largest fish hatchery, that’s what. And did the Cowlitz create that kind of fishing pressure, or did a very successful initial hatchery program create it? Major hatchery programs on other rivers have created such fishing zoos, and that is what seems to have happened on the Cowlitz as well. Your statement appears to support the notion that large hatcheries create the problems of overfishing that they often were intended to solve. I think it is not the job of any river system to absorb fishing pressure. It is the responsibility of fisheries management, like WDFW, to manage fishing so that it doesn’t jeopardize any population of fish.

I asked WDFW’s regional folks what fishing would have looked like in recent years if Tacoma had never built the Cowlitz dams and no one built or stocked any hatchery fish in the Cowlitz. The reply might surprise you. Most noticable, there would be no summer steelhead fishery. Summer runs were few in number before the hatchery program began in the early 70s. During the 90s, with no dams and no hatchery, based on predictions of natural fish production, there would have been no spring chinook or fall chinook fishing allowed. A modest coho fishery and modest winter steelhead fishery is what the experts predict would be available today, given the way environmental conditions are.

Tacoma’s mitigation obligation is to replace whatever its project impacts are, not what the sportfishing public would like it to be. Change in uncomfortable. And the fishery on the Cowlitz has already changed. The obsolete hatchery can no longer feed our expectations of excess. So under a new license, Tacoma will have to make good on the Cowlitz fishery, to equal or exceed official estimates of what production would be with no dams in place. The new hatchery is intended to produce healthier smolts, hopefully that will duplicate the survival rates of wild ones (tho that is probably unrealistic). And fish passage. If the facilities don’t meet NMFS requirements, Tacoma must keep spending until they meet passage goals, or everyone agrees that further improvements are unlikely. At that point, if the mitigation numbers aren’t being met, the balance can be provided with hatchery fish. As a contingency, the hatchery is being sized, according to Tacoma’s consultant, to provide the entire Cowlitz salmon and steelhead production, according to the mitigation goals in the license settlement.

It seems to me that the future on the Cowlitz looks a lot like the things you and many others on the BB express support for. A wild steelhead release is necessary for the successful recovery of native steelhead, primarily in the upper river. This shouldn’t pose much problem, since many of us are trying to get a statewide wild steelhead C&R policy anyway. If spring chinook production can be improved any time soon, you’ll have to release the wild ones, but you could still bonk the clipped ones - just the same as one the Columbia at this moment. And with coho mass marking, it doesn’t look like we’ll be keeping unmarked coho very often in the future anywhere in this state. And fall chinook, well I don’t know. I hear that the recovery of those is focused on the lower Cowlitz, below the dams. In order for that to be successful, commercial harvest rates will have to be adjusted to what wild stocks can tolerate, not the more abundant hatchery fall tules.

So, a long reply. But a lot has happened on the Cowlitz. It rose, it fell. Now, will it rise again? Not in the form anglers of the past 30 years were accustomed to. But possibly in a more sustainable way. Most of the harvest will be born by hatchery fish. But the presence of natural runs will provide some resilience that has been missing. So hatchery disease outbreaks and low ocean survival shouldn’t have as distressing impacts overall as has occurred lately.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

What Salmo said!

Actually, I was going to mirror his comments but without writing a thesis (sorry Salmo!...just kidding, you gave a good account.)

One issue I find interesting is that there has been no mention of the ozone treatment facility at the trout hatchery. Remember when that went in not so long ago? It was designed to treat incoming river water and more or less sterilize it from aquatic parasites and bacteria thus giving the hatchery smolts more of a fighting chance.

I was under the impression that it was having some success. They spent millions on it and did extensive testing beforehand to insure the money would be well spent.

Apparently, they should have done some more testing eh?

Thanks much Salmo. Somewhere along the line months ago this subject of the Cowlitz being managed as a wild fish sactuary became a controversial thread. Then we had these terrible returns on winters and springer projections that lead to my speculation that the Tacoma Power had not planted smolts as they should. So now I hear from you that their hatchery is in disaray and has been allowed to go to substandard conditions putting out diseased inferior smolts into our watersheds, despite the legal requirements to run it properly. How could that be allowed to happen under the supervision of the WDF&G?!? It should never have been allowed to come to this. I just hope they do come forth quickly with what you are telling us they plan for a state of the art facility for the Cowlitz River.

RT

It is easy to sit back and slam the F.O.C. from your deck at home if you don't like the way things are go to the broad metting. or the events like the easter egg hunt on Sunday talk to the people face to face.Or be QUITE I personaly don't think this C&R thing is any more than rumer There are a few wild fish but NO nates left in the Cowlitz

Actually Chieftain, not everybody can make it to the easter egg hunt. Go to the board meetings? Dude, I'm there. As far as sitting on my deck and home and *****ing, I'm at work *****ing about it.

If folks want to ***** about their organization and can't make it to the meetings, then I think their voice matters just as much as the ones that go to the meetings. 2 phone calls and 1 very professional, detailed email. That's 0/3 in replies from them so far. You haven't heard *****ing yet, but if you sit on your deck at home long enough, then I imagine you'll read some more *****ing, bro. If you don't like it, then cry me a handful, but this is how things work when you want changes implemented.

Over 50% of the U.S. population is online now, so don't you think that providing information is essential if you are trying to promote your cause and your organization? You don't have to answer that question because I already know the answer.

I belong to several more organizations whom are very courteous about replying to messages and emails, and if they piss me off, then I'll ***** about them too until I see some changes.

Oh, and one more thing, I'm not the only one *****ing, chief, just the loudest.

Eric and RT,

I understand that the ozone treatment at the trout hatchery is only large enough to treat the water used for egg incubation and early steelhead fry rearing. I believe the ozone treatment works well enough, but it only treats a small fraction of the total hatchery water supply. Once the fish are ponded in the large 5 acre ponds, they are in raw river water. Of course, the trout hatchery gets its water supply from the mainstem river, the only source that can provide the huge amount necessary for rearing 940,000 steelhead smolts. Unfortunately, that same water supply is the sickly effluent from the Cowlitz salmon hatchery 6 or 8 miles upriver. I’m told that treating the entire water supply would be cost prohibitive, however much that is.

Regarding the hatcheries, Tacoma owns the property and facilities, but they are 100% operated by WDFW. Tacoma just pays the bills. The state has about 25 departmental employees to operate the facilities at Tacoma’s expense. This is probably as it should be. It may be fun to blame Tacoma for what we perceive as going wrong - after all, they built the dams that destroyed the native runs - , but WDFW operates the hatcheries and makes the decisions about what fish to rear, how to rear them, etc. So if smolts are sick from hatchery overcrowding, is it WDFW’s fault for not following their own hatchery practice recommendations, or Tacoma’s for not providing enough hatchery space? The two sides have apparently been arguing about it for years. Further food for thought: biologists estimate that total salmon and steelhead production above the Mayfield dam site was no more than 4 million native smolts per year just prior to building the dams. WDFW releases over 10 million hatchery smolts per year that are larger and significantly less healthy. Perhaps there is something wrong with this picture?

It appears WDFW wants to protect its state jobs and vested interests in high harvest rate commercial and recreational fisheries on hatchery stocks - perhaps at the expense of recovery of listed fish. Tacoma wants to spend as little money as necessary. A situation ripe for continued conflict. I predict that common sense will be the solution of last resort.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

As long as everybody is pissing and moaning, I thought I'd throw my 2 cents worth in. First I'd like to say that the Cowlitz has got to be the most mismanaged river in the state. There, that being said, I'd also like to say that it is my opinion that this latest thing with trying to turn the Cowlitz into a Native C&R river is destined for failure. IT WILL NOT WORK! The River has become too dependent on the hatcheries making fish to support the runs, and it just isn't feasible to expect that a river that gets as much pressure as the Cowlitz could ever revert back to a "wild" river. I know that there's a lot of "Purists" on this site that hate hatchery fish but in this case we need those fish. Plus, I'd like to remind everybody that the companies that oporate the dams on the Cowlitz are obligated to continue to stock fish in the river. If you ask me it all boils down to the all mighty dollar. What should be the best river in the state is turning into a totally sterile river because the big power companies (and our fisheries department) aren't doing their jobs. A few of you guys have good points when you say that we as sportsmen need to get involved, but is it so much to ask that the people who get paid to look after the welfare of our fish runs do the jobs that we pay them to do? Why do we even pay these outragous license and usage fees if it's up to us to do the jobs that our license money is supposed to pay for?