Coastal bays and rivers: Another year of strong wild coho returns should provide good fishing in many of Washington’s coastal streams, including the Queets and Quillayute rivers, as well as those flowing into Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay.
One change this year will allow recreational anglers exclusive access to salmon in the prime fishing area of Willapa Bay (Marine Area 2-1). Waters off Tokeland in the northcentral portion of the bay – known as 2T – will be open for recreational salmon fishing only from 6 p.m. Aug. 15 through 6 p.m. Sept. 15.

Anglers fishing in Willapa Bay also will be allowed to use two fishing poles, with the purchase of a two-pole endorsement, from Aug. 1
through Jan. 31.

...hasn't Willapa bay been traditionally targeted heavily by commercials? Just wonderin' why the exclusivity towards sporties?

Look at the WB map below. Commercials will be there in force.... but they will be fishing below us (2N) and behind us (2U) but never in front of us during the specified period. Net free from the ocean thru the heart of the usual and customary rec trolling grounds. Sports will basically have first crack at every potential biter as they enter the bay.

http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/commercial/salmon/2011_wb_map.pdf

Nice.Good luck,
SZ

Thank you for clarifying Doc. I've fished down there once, man what a fun fishery!

Nice, but those of us who fish the Naselle (bankie) will still struggle since 2N will get pounded by the nets. But since the coho run is expected to be fairly large, it's possible the season will extend well into October. That will give us a better shot at late run coho.

Harvest model is set up to limit Naselle chinook impact to no more than 30% exploitation.

It used to be that the nets went in for a wipeout fishery starting in mid sept with no netting before that.

In those days you could count on a solid month of great fishing from mid august to mid sept.

Now just about the time the bay accumulates a few fish they start netting (the week before aug 15th) all over the bay and it takes a solid two weeks for the fishing to get back to being decent. That leaves two weeks of decent fishing before the big rodeo sept 15th.

Somehow the bill of goods that two weeks of decent fishing is superior to a month of great fishing has been sold (I guess mainly by the two pole endorsement). Collectively we're clearly gullible idiots.

The coho fishing has been historically poor, but great the past two years. I can only imagine what the coho fishing would be like if we could fish during the peak of the run instead of a month before the peak. The coho last year weren't as plentiful as the year before, but the quality-- I have never seen the like.

On WB it aint the good ole days to be sure, despite some outlandish claims to the contrary.

Geoduck, what are you doing to try to make the fishery better?

A valid concern for the Bay's river fishers.

You need to be aware though that the last several years the bay has been wide open to netting pretty much from mid- Sept through mid/late october and then again in early Nov. That scoops up a lot of the coho, even the later returning fish that stage out there first. Proof? Here you go:

http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/commercial/salmon/landings.html

A better shot at late-returning fish? I don't know about a better shot but you'll have a shot for the stragglers that get through. Much like Grays Harbor's upriver fisheries, the WB trib sport fisheries are waaaaaayyyyy at the bottom of the Dept's priority totem pole and it's reflected in the wipeout commercial fisheries they endorse.

Fish4 brains,

What would you have me do? As was said above the rec fleet is at the bottom of the totem pole. I've written the commission, wdfw staff, volunteered to be on their advisory board. Asked for data. They really don't want to hear from me. All responses have been cursory at best. Transparency on WB managment is obviously not a priority.

WDFW is clearly bent on a pre-2000's style of managment for willapa.

Seems likely it will be a full on safe zone like situation in the near future.

The argument that they need to harvest those fish is irrelevant to the main problem which is they make us fish behind the nets for the early part of the chinook run (when the best biters are entering the bay). They can catch all the fish they need to make their quotas in the willapa river and 2N or points more terminal. They just don't want to and WDFW cares more about keeping the commercial fleet happy than they do the rec fleet. Never mind there is more economic value in the scraps left for the rec than there is in the entire commercial take.

rant off.

I agree 100%

I keep hearing that the coho fishing was good last year, yet the hatchery returning fish to the Willapa was less than 3000 for both runs. The Naselle was better but it was a down year for returning hatchery fish. Perhaps the native run was good?

Typically its around 50/50 hatchery/wild. I don't think run size for the coho has much to do with the quality of the coho fishing. The rec fleet is typically done about a month before the peak of the coho run.

I think it has more to do with how early the coho show up. Historically speaking coho seemed later than they have been the past few years.

From 2000 to 2010 we averaged about 1-2 coho per season. 2010 to 2012 we averaged better than a coho per day on the water. Note that's about a 5 fold difference in catch rate. Didn't change the way we fish. Its just that we've had a few good years of early early coho. I'd like to think the past few years is a permanent coho trend but I doubt it.

WDFW abandoned doing angler checks on WB, so we have no hard data to support it, but from talking to people the coho catches have really improved, but chinook catches are way down. Overall catch rate of salmon might not have changed much. Several here ascribe that to brilliant management, but to say I am skeptical would be a mild way to put it.

It's too bad that Geoduck and all the other naysayers are so convinced about how bad Willapa sucked in 2011.

CRC data says otherwise...

Sport landings for chinook in 2011 (the most recent available from CRC's) were 8.3K... an all-time record high eclipsing the previous record catch of 4.8 K in 2005.

So here's the possibilities...

1) The fishing really DID suck, but enough people came down to partake in the sucky fishing that the total fleet catch set a record.

2) The fishing didn't suck, but lotsa people with the perception that it did suck simply didn't bother to show up. Those who did show up enjoyed prime fishing and caught enough fish to set a record for total rec catch.

3) A helluvalotta boastful folks lied outright on their CRC.

Take yer pick.....

Its obviously #1. It is clear that despite a declining interst by WDFW in the sport fleet on WB, that it is growing year by year. There was a little more than a week of above average fishing in 2011, mind you on a huge run. THere was huge particiaption. The commmercial fishing again took the starch out of what should have been a stellar month long wide open bite and confined it to the period just before and after labor day. I am sure if we'd had decent opportiunty for all of august instead of the last few days we'd have caught twice that given the size of the fleet.

The WB fishery may satisfy you by filling the gap between B10 and grays harbor nicely, but many of us are not happy with that.

The rest of the month was a shadow of what it could been had the netters not wiped the bay clean for the majority of august.

The irony is, the netters really didn't get that many more fish, they just took them from in front of us.

BTW, where did you find 2011 CRC data?

I only see it through 2009 on the website.

Privilege of being on the advisory committee

Interesting you chose #1 as I put it out there as more of a tongue in cheek kind of thing.

My most often-repeated assertion at the advisory/NOF meetings when stumping for the rec camp:

"For a sporty, opportunity starts with a bite. Only a SMALL percentage of the fish bite, so rec opportunity hinges heavily on real-time abundance and getting first crack at potential biters. The more fish that see the gear, the greater the likelihood of eventually running into a biter that snaps at the gear"

So in essence, for the rec fleet to catch a record chinook harvest, there had to be a zhit-pile of kings available to see the gear, most of them NON-biters, but obviously a pool of suicidal biters as well. The opportunity was clearly there. The fact that the same limited pool of biters might have to be shared among many more boats is another matter altogether.

Biters are biters, and non-biters ain't. Only so many fish will bite on a given day. Once a critical mass of boats is on the water, they WILL catch all the biters for the day. The effect of further doubling or tripling the effort will NOT be proportional to the total catch at the end of the day.

That's the unique thing about a combat rec fishery. Whether there's 200 vs 400 vs 600 boats plying the water on any given day, essentially the same fixed number of biters will die that day.

That's where it gets a bit competitive, where only the cleanest presentations among those hundreds of boats are consistently gonna get bit.

Dear Eyefish,
Your previous post is just silly (the one before it I did find interesting). Your theory of biters and non-biters is unfounded, yet you present it as fact. We can't know whether some fish refuse to bite or all fish just have a very low probability of biting at any given time. Genetically speaking, if it was as simple as you say, then all fish in a heavily targeted fishery like Willapa or B10 would be non biters by now. Personally, I think just about any fish will bite under the right conditions. Certainly as the fish become more mature and they shift from feeding to aggression related bites, the window of opportunity narrows. Regardless there are no facts on this issue and you pretending otherwise is truly ridiculous.

Willapa bay is a big piece of water and there are very few fish returning relatively. Also visibility is poor, so you need to put your gear right on the fish. There is no way that the fleet as it is effectively covers all the water. Anyone that fishes WB consistently knows that the periods when the fish bite consistently are relatively limited in time and space. Much of the fleet is not attuned to that fact. I do agree that there can be too many boats for optimal success, but even in huge combat fisheries like B10 and lake washington it takes a ton of boats before the fleet interferes with itself to the point where adding more boats doesn't mean more fish caught.

Cleanest presentations might help especially when the bite is off, but when its on, the key is to show your bait to fish. Not much finesse required when there's a wide open bite on--just get your gear in the water and hang on.

My beef is that the so called improvements in management have really been a step backwards from what we had a decade ago. Sure they had a record catch 2 years ago off of a near record run, but that was despite managment changes, not because of them. The real driver was a lot of effort which has grown despite a shrinking pie. I think the fact that WB grows in popularity stems from the relative accessibility for smaller boats and the simplicity of the fishery (no downriggers or other fanciness required).

The reason I have a bone to pick with you is that you consistently seem to be applying lipstick to the pig and telling us its the best thing ever. Sure the fishing is better than say area 11, but its not what it could be or what it once was. That's not good management in my book. I would be forgiving if biology was the problem or catch outside the terminal area, but the problem is gear conflict.

There is no good reason for the baywide opener in mid august. The Nets would catch those fish just as easily in 2N and 2U a couple weeks later. I don't understand why the commercial netters should get the lions share and fish in front of us. Its not like we're dealing with tribal issues here.

Since I've got your ear, the other problem I have is that management refuses to hear dissent. I am not one to kiss up rather preferring to rely on data and facts where possible. It seems that keeping data in a secret club and not letting anyone that disagrees be part of that club is a way try and hold to a weak position. Transparency it is not.