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Chris - You are correct, I meant 2021 not 2001. Corrected my posts. The last year summer steelhead were planted in NF was 2019.

Matt - The NF Stillaguamish Chinook are considered to be summer Chinook with some fish entering the river as early as late May with building numbers through the summer in the NF pools. The tribe typically collects brood stock (via seining those pools) around the middle of August. I believe it...

Coming out of NOF the season on the North Fork Stillaguamish for 2026 will be 8/29 to 11/30 from its mouth upstream to the Hwy 530 bridge (Cicero). I have followed the more than decade long struggle to maintain game fish season on the NF Stilly during the summer fairly closely. After several...

As always great questions! I think it would work the other way. For the moment let's assume that we start with 30 hatchery fish and 10 wild. in this case for every wild we can take 3 hatchery . However, if the number of wilds were cut in half giving us 5 wild and 30 hatchery. Now for ever...

With the Snohomish wild coho being a limiting factor I suspect the changing ratio of hatchery to wild coho in the basin played a factor. The hatchery coho tend to return earlier (earlier spawn timing) than the wild coho thus the later in the season (read October) the higher the impacts on the...

Next year's NOF may be even more challenging that this year. With modern day record floods in December on both the Snohomish and Skagit expect the pinks will return at levels well below escapement needs in those basins. Pink fisheries may well be pushed to MA 10 and areas to the south. The...

Just review the proposed freshwater regulations for the Skagit. Bull trout change a win- With the exception of the Hwy 530 to Rockport to Cascade Road bridge (Rockport to Marblemount) release of bull trout will be required. Suspect that Rockport to Marblemount exception may have been a...

I like that kind of "out of the box" thinking. Unfortunately, I don't think would "pencil out" as well as hoped. Typically, the Chinook impacts in the various fisheries fall into 3 buckets of impacts: 1) the "shaker" encounters/mortalities, 2) the unmarked encounters/mortalities, and 3) the...

Without a doubt those the take part in these winter season enjoy the opportunity and would like to see more such opportunities. That said the real question is how to best use the limited impacts of the ESA Puget Sound Chinook in crafting fishing opportunities. From WDFW's selective fishing...

While I first saw the green sunfish in Pass maybe 25 years ago reliable reports have them being in Pass at least 40 years and maybe as far back as the 1960s (there were reports of sunfish either bluegills or green sunfish depending on who was telling the story in the lake). To my knowledge...

Pink Nighty Not sure how the smallmouth and bluegill got into that storm water pond but am sure that the sticklebacks did not make that journey via a friendly duck. When sticklebacks spawn the make constructs a pretty elaborate nest. They construct basically a ball of vegetive materials with...

I have actually caught individuals illegally plant fish (aka bucket biologists) have also had others admit to being "bucket biologist". There are number of examples of exotic species being introduced in waters far from a source population. For example, in the last couple decades northern...

SF - Thanks for keeping us current on the NOF process! I saw that Chinook modeling tool yesterday; after a few minutes of trying different scenarios, it was clear that it is reaching those goals in the model will be impossible without near elimination of most of the PS Chinook recreational...

I can only comment on the so-called spring fish in the north Puget Sound rivers. In the 1970s through the early 1990s early return hatchery fish were pretty common. I saw them as early as mid-February and April it was not all that unusual to encounter one during the spring CnR fisheries that...

Tom?

Pink Nighty - Assuming that you found your South Fork summer steelhead post late 1970s they likely were hatchery fish. Those hatchery fish were planted in both Canyon Creek and the upper South Fork. During the 1980s there were some exceptional summer fish to be found in both the South and...

Another interesting read is Enos Bradner's "Northwest Angling", 1950. Some sights into the steelhead rivers and fishing in the 1940s. The Chapter on the Washington (or Oregon) steelhead rivers was of a particular interest to me. The chapters on Pass like, the cutthroat ponds (Dave) and the...

As also it comes down meeting the allowable Southern United States (Sus) exploitation rates (ERs). If you review the 3rd link provided StonedFish you will find additional recreational opportunities above last year's fisheries (slide 11) to be modeled, slides 12 (chinook) and 13 (coho) show the...

If interested in Bob's fishing stories and some of his poetry may look for a copy of his "Snohomish by Beloved County, an Anglers Anthology" Bob Heirman, 1993 He was born in 1932 and lived most (all/) of his life in the family homestead up the hill from Blackman's lake on the outskirts of...

Thanks to those that have taken the time to comment on all or part of the proposal that I put forth in my initial post. In recent weeks a couple items have come to my attention that likely will raise the urgency to protect the resident rainbow component of the O. mykiss complex in the Skagit...