Dismal on the 'Duc - Coho management failure

[Dustin Chromers]

Habitat is a topic that interests me. I’m not convinced that watershed degradation is a big factor on the OP. Logging environmental practices are light years ahead of the cut and run of the late 70s when the end of old growth harvest was driving massive clear cuts on the west end. The OP in general provides the best undisturbed watersheds in the lower 48. All on the upper watersheds are in the Park. Hell the worst watershed is the SolDuc because it has 101 next to it, not a city of hundreds of thousands. The habitat of the watersheds from the Dungeness (not included) to the Humptulips is probably been improving over the last 1/2 century rather than degrading. There’s significantly more going on. I was and still am wildly in favor of the Elwha Dam removals. But to predict returns of salmon and steelhead runs while all the neighboring rivers degrade I have never bought into. I’m not that smart but I don’t think that the people who are smart really believed this either.
Giving money to protect the Hoh is GREAT. I couldn’t support that more. Unfortunately I don’t believe it will truly address the problems our fish populations face.
Can anybody suggest why the decline is happening. Is it global climate change, is it tribal and sport harvest, is it over harvest and by catch in the oceans. Or by screwing the runs have we screwed the habitat by cutting off the nutrient supply provided by the runs?
I just don’t see watershed habitat degradation on the OP as a major contributing factor. Please no one interpret this as my not supporting habitat protection!

You're asking the right questions with a couple of great posts here imho. Take it for what it's worth though as I don't claim to be smart either. I see an intact habitat, or as intact as one could hope in today's world. I see declining numbers. It's pretty hard for me not to consider harvest as a major driver of decline. Again I'm a simple man but I propose not killing them especially in droves at low water while self monitoring your catch may have a bigger impact than the agencies and co managers would like you to believe. But then again the smart people at said agencies have told me different. It's hard for me to believe when you can literally see the impact happening in real time in front of your face. And yes I'm aware that's just a part of the impact when ocean fishing can hardly be measured as we really don't know who's fish are going where.

 

[LBL]

You should first understand that any arrangement to pay a tribe not to fish (for steelhead) is for the express purpose of transferring fishing and fish harvest from treaty to non-treaty recreational interests and not for conservation. Except in a couple of limited cases - Quinault, Queets, and possibly the Quilayute - treaty fishing is not limiting wild steelhead populations. I've seen zero evidence that treaty fishing is creating a reduction in the size of wild steelhead populations in WA, but for the above noted exceptions.

Having noted the treaty fishing impacts, I'd have to ask, what is the purpose of paying a tribe not to fish steelhead, if not to create additional opportunity for non-treaty recreational steelhead fishing? I'm OK with that; I just want to be clear about the purpose and what is and what is not being achieved by doing so. In my interactions with tribal members, the tribal governments aren't interested in being paid not to fish. First, it looks bad from their perspective, suggesting that they can be "bought off." Second, it could set a precedent toward future actions that would negatively affect tribal interests. Third, treaty Indians like to fish and want to fish for traditional and cultural reasons, even when they can't profit financially from it. They like to fish, just as I like to fish. Fourth, and generally the lesser reason, some treaty fishermen want to fish for steelhead because it pisses off some non-treaty sport fishers, and those tribal folks don't want us to ever forget that "payback's a bitch."

Other than the above reasons, paying treaty tribes not to fish is logistically and economically possible. But as you can see, the obstacles are not logistics nor money.

This is the type of feedback I was hoping for. Thanks

 

[LBL]

Just scrolled through the wdfw creel reports https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/reports/creel/north-coast-surveys.
Ugh
Are there no fish left?
Are there no survey takers left?

 

[_WW_]

Every time the returns are low it's that fucking WDFW's fault. When the returns are better then it's "improving ocean survival."
It is what it is man. Deal with it or take up golf.

 

[Chris Bellows]

Habitat is a topic that interests me. I’m not convinced that watershed degradation is a big factor on the OP. Logging environmental practices are light years ahead of the cut and run of the late 70s when the end of old growth harvest was driving massive clear cuts on the west end. The OP in general provides the best undisturbed watersheds in the lower 48. All on the upper watersheds are in the Park. Hell the worst watershed is the SolDuc because it has 101 next to it, not a city of hundreds of thousands. The habitat of the watersheds from the Dungeness (not included) to the Humptulips is probably been improving over the last 1/2 century rather than degrading. There’s significantly more going on. I was and still am wildly in favor of the Elwha Dam removals. But to predict returns of salmon and steelhead runs while all the neighboring rivers degrade I have never bought into. I’m not that smart but I don’t think that the people who are smart really believed this either.
Giving money to protect the Hoh is GREAT. I couldn’t support that more. Unfortunately I don’t believe it will truly address the problems our fish populations face.
Can anybody suggest why the decline is happening. Is it global climate change, is it tribal and sport harvest, is it over harvest and by catch in the oceans. Or by screwing the runs have we screwed the habitat by cutting off the nutrient supply provided by the runs?
I just don’t see watershed habitat degradation on the OP as a major contributing factor. Please no one interpret this as my not supporting habitat protection!

I'm not sure the example of the Dungeness as improving is a good one with the huge amount of growth of the Sequim area really screws up the lower watershed which is critical to juvenile fish rearing.

As for the Sol Duc and other rivers on the OP with large hatchery programs, all the high end quality habitat in the upper watershed means jack sh*# if the majority of the wild fish are caught by nets in mixed stock fisheries before they can access that habitat, plus the hatcheries programs themselves have removed critical wild coho habitat from production (Bruce Brown's Mountain in the Clouds has some details on this). This coupled with escapement goals (even the higher WDFW ones) that are far too low to fill the habitat over time has led to this.

For steelhead on many of the coastal rivers it's the same issue. The original primary wild run timing skewed early and that has been disrupted by mixed stock fisheries targeting chambers creek hatchery steelhead. Much of the habitat on the Qullayute is rain fed which means that spring spawning will not be as successful in smaller tributaries that warm up earlier (this will only get worse with climate change).

If we want wild fish on the coast it will require sacrifices which the main players seem unwilling to make.

 

[damppdogg]

I've been torn on whether to share my thoughts on this or not as I'm sure I don't have all the facts and background context. So take this with a grain of salt as being written by a semi-local who is acquainted with a bunch of Forks anglers and guides and who is also pretty fed up with the WDFW approach to fisheries management on the Quilleute system.

Fall coho on the Sol Duc has been pretty much a complete bust. Last week I heard the hatchery has only gotten 2,500 fish whereas 19-20K is more normal for this point in the season.

Some of you will recall my complaints about the nonsensical summer closure to help get hatchery take for spring chinook (didn't really happen) in this thread: OP Closures

Well, in their wisdom, instead of waiting for rain like they did last year, WDFW re-opened the river in early October when the rivers were still at record low flows. The Sol Duc was shin deep at the deepest behind our place. So the fall coho run was trapped in the lower Quilleute where it was wiped out by overharvest; tribal, sport, and poaching. I haven't seen numbers but I have a good guess on which one of those had the worst impact. There just wasn't any water to give the fish refuge and they could not get up the step at Leyendecker to access the Sol Duc.

Fast forward to now, we've had some rain and decent flows and the Sol Duc is basically empty. I can usually go out and see a few rollers in the tank downstream and when the rain comes, it's a stream of coho on their way to the hatchery just upstream of my house. This year, not a splash. I've floated from the hatchery to my house a couple times and there's just nothing there. Maybe one or two stragglers.

And... it appears the original forecast was way off, too optimistic.

Given this exact situation happened last year and they mitigated it with an early closure until we got rain, their approach this year makes no sense. Pure speculation on my part but given no transparency from WDFW as usual, the narrative that creates itself in my head is that that tribes told the WDFW that they were fishing whatever WDFW says and that if we don't, they're taking ours too on foregone opportunity.

So before you congratulate them for taking a stand on the Qin, think about the total fuckup on the Quil.

New Member comment. Before I lend my 2 cents to this thread let me say I have no direct skin in the game as it pertains to the state of WA. I did spend 6 years here starting in 2015 and ventured forth learning how to spey cast and getting started chasing mostly steelhead. I always thought the big issues that were responsible for obvious decline of the great salmon and steelhead fisheries of the PNW were mainly user group quotas and environmental! I know to some extent that may be correct. But the real obstacle is POLITICS and it doesn't matter if your talking about the PNW or the Striper populations of the Hudson river or Chesapeake bay. I would imagine there are a number of great well meaning people in fish and wildlife mgmt that are so frustrated about how complicated doing the right thing is. Sounds to me like what happened on the Quil amounted to piscatorial genocide POLITICS!!!!! This really situation really bugged me and was totally avoidable. Thanks for letting me clear my mind. damppdogg.