Nooksack river closed all summer... who knows the story behind this?

DanielOcean said:
Nooksack is way to far of a drive to break the law. Atleast for me. I am lucky to still have plenty of opportunities down here.
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All you need to do is fish a stream not listed in the special regs section. You know like some blue line the wdfw either doesn't know about and therefore have not screwed up yet or simply one they don't acknowledge or maybe don't print in the book out of sheer lazy tendencies.
 
No surprise that western Washington rivers keep closing for steelhead and salmon while the nets stay in the river. The tribes have disproportionate political power at the WA state level thanks to a monopoly on casino revenues and a willing political partner (i.e., donor recipient) in the state's one party system.

The mountain men once moaned and complained about the fading trade in beaver pelts. All trapped out and then fashions in England changed.

 
charles sullivan said:
I am guessing that the number of North Fork hatchery fish is not truly important. I am sure that there is a harvestable surplus there. I am not one to assume that the department is being deceptive by not publishing the estimates. It could be the case. I don't know.

The wild steelhead impacts are supposed to be limitted to 4% per the puget sound steelhead plan. On a run size of 2,000-2,500 that is less that 100 fish. In itself, this could justify a closure through June on all forks and no fishing in the S. Fork (it has wild summers) to stay underneath those impacts.

Then there is the wild S. Fork spring/ summer kings. There are not too many impacts available there. I'm guessing it's less than 50.

I think we also have to understand that there are cowboy impacts in the saltwater. These have been reduced with the elimination of blackmouth season and the 3 day July saltwater season but I suspect hey still factor some impacts in.

There is a complete lack of will on the part of WDFW to be creative when it comes to sportfish seasons in the PS. This is the same scenario as we see play out on the N. Fork Stilly. It is frustrating and I don't really have a good idea as to how to change it.

I can only assume what the tribal perspective and infuence is. I dislike making assumptions. The lack of information about it leaves it as my only option though.
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I get what you are saying, but the SF (and the main stem directly below it, and the last 100yds of the NF at the confluence for a cool water refuge) have been closed until oct for 20 years. I know historically the SF held summers, but there is almost zero chance it currently does running 75° and 6" deep all summer.

The effort on the nooksack is tiny when cnr only and other systems are open. In seasons where they have closed retention of Springers but had the standard Saturday before Memorial opening, there are a handful of dudes (mostly me and @Rvrfisher360 ) that are up there fishing. In the winter when any other system is open it's a ghost town.

I know you have addressed this, but there are so many other ways to achieve the goals without closure. It takes a drop of those things wdfw lacks, balls and brains.
 
Pink Nighty said:
I get what you are saying, but the SF (and the main stem directly below it, and the last 100yds of the NF at the confluence for a cool water refuge) have been closed until oct for 20 years. I know historically the SF held summers, but there is almost zero chance it currently does running 75° and 6" deep all summer.

The effort on the nooksack is tiny when cnr only and other systems are open. In seasons where they have closed retention of Springers but had the standard Saturday before Memorial opening, there are a handful of dudes (mostly me and @Rvrfisher360 ) that are up there fishing. In the winter when any other system is open it's a ghost town.

I know you have addressed this, but there are so many other ways to achieve the goals without closure. It takes a drop of those things wdfw lacks, balls and brains.
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The South Fork still has summers.

I agree with what you are saying generally. I wish it were open too. i can also see the department having the perspective that there can't have a springer opening because they can't be sure that they have not already reached the 4% impact rate on steelhead. They closed hatchery steelhead for this reason.

With the amount of shaming of WDFW for being responsible for fish declines, I gotta believe that it paralyzes them from being aggressive trying to get a few anglers on the river catching springers. That juice is not worth the sqeeze. It sucks but it seems to be the logical outcome of our paradigm right now.

I can't see the Nookie beeing open in the spring/ summer in the near future.
 
charles sullivan said:
The South Fork still has summers.

I agree with what you are saying generally. I wish it were open too. i can also see the department having the perspective that there can't have a springer opening because they can't be sure that they have not already reached the 4% impact rate on steelhead. They closed hatchery steelhead for this reason.

With the amount of shaming of WDFW for being responsible for fish declines, I gotta believe that it paralyzes them from being aggressive trying to get a few anglers on the river catching springers. That juice is not worth the sqeeze. It sucks but it seems to be the logical outcome of our paradigm right now.

I can't see the Nookie beeing open in the spring/ summer in the near future.
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If you're saying the department as a whole is butthurt that their constituents dont believe they're doing a good job, and using that butthurtness to justify not doing their job whatsoever, than maybe that shaming has been justified, if not insufficient. If they have decided "the juice is not worth the squeeze" then why the hell do they exist?

As for the south fork having summers, sure. They might still exist. And the south fork has been closed until October since the early 2000s. The change is to the mainstem and the north fork, with the ouch coming from the north fork. The fork that hosts thousands of state owned hatchery Springers.
 
charles sullivan said:
“You have these spring Chinook runs that come in the spring and then hold over in the river throughout the summer before they spawn in the fall,” said Chase Gunnell, a communications manager for WDFW. “That makes them very vulnerable to low and warm water conditions.”

The department was concerned about how a drought forecast and a predicted low return of spring Chinook might impact the river in the summer. By closing the river to all fishing, anglers hoping to hook a trout can avoid inadvertently catching a spring Chinook, Gunnell said.

“Maybe they release it and have no intention of killing it, but if that salmon is tired or stressed from that bycatch, it has the potential to either die or have less fitness for spawning,” Gunnell said.
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Someone should explain to Mr. Gunnell that a Chinook caught on trout gear will be unstressed as the fight will be over in .1 seconds. Pretty thin justification in my eyes
 
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Pink Nighty said:
If you're saying the department as a whole is butthurt that their constituents dont believe they're doing a good job, and using that butthurtness to justify not doing their job whatsoever, than maybe that shaming has been justified, if not insufficient. If they have decided "the juice is not worth the squeeze" then why the hell do they exist?

As for the south fork having summers, sure. They might still exist. And the south fork has been closed until October since the early 2000s. The change is to the mainstem and the north fork, with the ouch coming from the north fork. The fork that hosts thousands of state owned hatchery Springers.
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I did not say anything resembling your 1st paragraph.

There is a 4% impact rate on steelhead. The tribe gets 1/2 of that. So, doing the math, there is 2% left. On a run of roughly 2,000 steelhead, that is 40 fish.
How can the department reasonably justify people fishing in May or even June when they are still in the river? They felt that they needed to close the river last winter. How many of those 40 dead paper fish were killed prior to that closure in the abbreviated hatch steelhead season? How many steelhead were likely killed by coho anglers?
From my discussions with the area bio, I don't believe that they even go through the process of trying to figure it out. The fact is, it's 40 fish (possibly even less). The conservative way to manage it is to close it. To do anything else leaves them open to further criticism and potential lawsuits from any person or group that is advocating for the fish. These people and groups are also the departments constituents.
I agree that it sucks. The current paradigm forces the outcome.

The reason for the lack of opportunity comes down to answering one question:

How could the department say that they adequately monitored the fishery when there are so few allowable impacts?

There is absolutely no way that they can.
 
CougarZeke said:
Someone should explain to Mr. Gunnell that a Chinook caught on trout gear will be unstressed as the fight will be over in .1 seconds. Pretty thin justification in my eyes
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You can't explain much to that guy. It makes perfect sense he is now a wdfw employee. He'll fit in perfectly.
 
If the problem is low water and high temperatures impacting the stress levels of the fishery in the summer, why is no one talking to forest managers in this and other drainages? Commercial foresters are driving the years of growth between harvest down to a shorter cycle which translates to a higher percentage of acreage harvested every year. That is going to lead to faster snowmelt, and higher ultimate summer temperatures, and lower summer water levels, along with more significant winter flooding.
Years ago I recall research saying you could maximize value from the forest at between 60-80 years rotation, although there are challenges with some degradation of the fiber, there are other forest products that are basically non existent in a 40 year forest. The commercial forests went in the other direction, forcing the building of sawmills that cannot efficiently handle a larger log, which devalues the timber on state and federal land where environmental considerations are more influential in policy decisions. The argument is still one worth having, whether a different forest economy could be just as robust while providing colder cleaner water for an also valuable stream environment.
If the saving of steelhead, spring chinook, bull trout, etc. is all on wdfw... I would say find something else to do with your time, because they are not going to survive without looking at the environment they live in and making policy decisions that encourage ALL parties in the watershed to make changes that allow them to survive. The sunken nets I have witnessed personally (a long time ago)up there are a sign that people cannot work together effectively.
 
nwbobber said:
If the problem is low water and high temperatures impacting the stress levels of the fishery in the summer, why is no one talking to forest managers in this and other drainages? Commercial foresters are driving the years of growth between harvest down to a shorter cycle which translates to a higher percentage of acreage harvested every year. That is going to lead to faster snowmelt, and higher ultimate summer temperatures, and lower summer water levels, along with more significant winter flooding.
Years ago I recall research saying you could maximize value from the forest at between 60-80 years rotation, although there are challenges with some degradation of the fiber, there are other forest products that are basically non existent in a 40 year forest. The commercial forests went in the other direction, forcing the building of sawmills that cannot efficiently handle a larger log, which devalues the timber on state and federal land where environmental considerations are more influential in policy decisions. The argument is still one worth having, whether a different forest economy could be just as robust while providing colder cleaner water for an also valuable stream environment.
If the saving of steelhead, spring chinook, bull trout, etc. is all on wdfw... I would say find something else to do with your time, because they are not going to survive without looking at the environment they live in and making policy decisions that encourage ALL parties in the watershed to make changes that allow them to survive. The sunken nets I have witnessed personally (a long time ago)up there are a sign that people cannot work together effectively.
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Forestry regulation and tax structure in it's current form along with the fact shareholders are driving many management decisions from Wall St. are such that there is incentive to cut 40 year and in some cases younger forests. Even with a weak and nearly non existent pulp market in many places on the west side of the state this is still the model most large landowners are working under. If you want to see the management paradigm change then changes to the incentive structure are needed. How would we approach this?

Since companies driven by delivering shareholder value do things basically for money let's get money involved as an incentive to keep forests on the ground longer. Perhaps tax breaks for longer rotations is in order being that the public extracts more value from older forests for recreation and wildlife related activities. Perhaps a different set of harvest rules are in order to bring incentive to keeping older forests are in order. These are carrots but regulators typically like to use sticks instead. For instance the new marbled murrlet regulations for Western Washington create a reverse incentive to let forests get older. What financially motivated land owner would want to let his forest grow to a point where they are further regulated and restricted come harvest time? The answer is that they don't. They cut it before it can qualify as habitat. Yet another genius feel good rule change that has the opposite of the desired effect. Great work by the wdfw, the DNR , and environmental interest groups. Heralded as a policy victory but will no doubt be a giant loser for the birds. This is just one example how regulation can have adverse effects to the goals of said individuals seeking to protect forest habitat.
 
nwbobber said:
Commercial foresters are driving the years of growth between harvest down to a shorter cycle which translates to a higher percentage of acreage harvested every year. That is going to lead to faster snowmelt, and higher ultimate summer temperatures, and lower summer water levels, along with more significant winter flooding.
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Perhaps counterintuitively, in temperate zones like the PNW, snow accumulates more quickly and persists longer into the Spring runoff period in clearings versus in forested areas. The trick is, it has to be cold enough to snow instead of rain, and the trend in the PNW is for less and less snow and more rain as a result of warming. So, cutting the whole forest to recruit more snow probably is not gonna save salmon and steelhead.
Young stands of trees are a lot thirstier and suck more water out a watershed than older forests. How this all plays into flooding is a bit more complex than a blanket statement can cover, but the overall sense that land use and land cover of a whole watershed matters to native fishes—well yeah, that is certainly right on the money. Pun intended.
 
One thing to keep in mind, is the forest floor in an older forest becomes like a sponge that can hold a lot of water. Composed of decaying matter mostly from the trees, it gets more effective at holding water as the forest ages. While the snow may melt, it can be held and released more slowly because of this sponge. I believe that this helps to temper flooding in snowmelt events.
If the forest is managed to include multi age growth (like leave a few trees behind) in the stand the moisture collection can be enhanced by condensing fog or mist, which can also be stored in the duff layer.
 
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