Upper Colombia/Snake summer steelhead forecasts

S

Smalma

Life of the Party
In the Columbia River discussion in NOF the summer steelhead forecast was given. Not Good News!

For the A stocks the hatchery forecast was 55,600 (last year's return was 121,576). The wild forecast was19,000 (last year's return was 36,543)
For the B stocks the hatchery forecast was 11,800 (last year's return was 48,160). The wild forecast was 1,100 (last year's return was 4,115).

Hard to believe in the first return over the first lower Snake Dam was an estimated 85,000 wild steelhead.

Curt
 
Pardon my ignorance, but hat do they base these forecasts on? Outmigration? Its not like these are coming from a test fishery.

If true that's pretty ugly. Here in mid-Gorge at the east end of the winter runs the returns have been terrible so far this year. Lots of negative days over Bonneville.
 
It’s been rough, for sure. I haven’t touched a fish, and I’m good for at least one by now.
 
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Rob Allen said:
Abolished all ocean net fishing and put aircraft carriers out there to enforce the protection of our resources. Not at all joking..
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Gotta wonder why steelhead are in the toilet and yet we had (relatively) great coho returns last year. Even though coho are hit heavy in mixed stock coastal fisheries which have next to zero effect on steelhead. Easy to make a superficial (and likely wrong) assumption that steelhead head out into the North Pacific and just "disappear".
 
SilverFly said:
Gotta wonder why steelhead are in the toilet and yet we had (relatively) great coho returns last year. Even though coho are hit heavy in mixed stock coastal fisheries which have next to zero effect on steelhead. Easy to make a superficial (and likely wrong) assumption that steelhead head out into the North Pacific and just "disappear".
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I don't know why , but I think a 5 year halt in all ocean net fishing would give us a base point off which to determine how much ocean fishing affects our runs. Hell it might even absolve them.. We just do not know..
 
Rob Allen said:
I don't know why , but I think a 5 year halt in all ocean net fishing would give us a base point off which to determine how much ocean fishing affects our runs. Hell it might even absolve them.. We just do not know..
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When Canada stopped netting chinook during covid, the immediate affect on Columbia returns was pretty profound.

I'm all for doing away with mixed stock open ocean netting and only allowing salmon harvest in terminal fisheries, but I know it'll never happen.
 
I don’t see how we can account for variables in the ocean environment if we don’t have a full accounting of the scope and scale of harvest/bycatch of any species, especially seemingly unconnected things like the sardine fishery.
 
Yard Sale said:
Pardon my ignorance, but hat do they base these forecasts on? Outmigration? Its not like these are coming from a test fishery.

If true that's pretty ugly. Here in mid-Gorge at the east end of the winter runs the returns have been terrible so far this year. Lots of negative days over Bonneville.
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Unless there is more recent model parameters that I haven't heard about, wild steelhead runsize estimates are based on combined parent brood year escapement estimates for the various age classes X the average of the 5 most recent StS (Spawner to Spawner) value. Alternatively, if there are reliable estimates of the outmigrating smolt population, then that is multiplied by the average of the most recent 5 SARs (smolt to adult return) rates. I've seen experimental estimates that applied a spring coastal upwelling factor in addtion, but I'm not aware if that is in general use.

High seas drift net catch data - if we had it consistently - is likely too random and too insignificant to be used as an additional multiplier.

Rob's suggestion of using aircraft carriers would truly constitute gov't. waste and abuse. Coast Guard patrol boats are more than up to the task if the ROE (rules of engagement) are modified per Rob's Executive Order. Interceptions by high seas drift nets as the proximate cause of the reductions in steelhead run sizes should be categorized with conspiracy theories. It's not that the drift nets don't encounter steelhead; they do. And it's not like we don't know anything about the numbers of boats fishing on the high seas; we do. Global Fishing Watch uses satellites to monitor how much of the world's oceans are being fished, and to some extent, by whom. My take home message is that steelhead are not being targeted in the ocean. There are too few of them to make that worth the effort. WDFW did a "back of the envelope" estimate back in the 1990s when we had a lot less global ocean fishing data than we now have. I say back-of-the-envelope because the model uses more assumptions than facts, so it's accuracy is not reliable. But there was a lot more pirate fishing effort then than there is now, and that estimate was that high seas fishing might account for as much as a 3% reduction in steelhead populations, meaning that high seas fishing isn't the bogeyman that could simply be eliminated by having the Navy sink foreign fishing boats.
 
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