The Outdoor Line Forum

We all realize that numbers of returning adult steelhead have been down for over a decade now and this warrants the closure of our once beloved catch and release season on the Skykomish and more recently the Skagit/Sauk. It seems once a river is closed, it is like a permanent last nail in the coffin.

My question is.....If numbers miraculously rebounded and built to the point of what would be considered "healthy", would the WDFW ever reopen these fisheries? Or is this just wishfull thinking?

I do believe that they would re-open these rivers. Part of their job and future as a department relies on people fishing. I would also say that as rec anglers, we need to stay diligent in following recovery and hold the department's feet to the fire.

They'll come back eventually...but it's going to be a while before we see the type of seasons we used to have. It takes a ton of paperwork to conduct a fishery on a listed species. I would expect to see more "opening day" type steelhead seasons in the future that can be easily monitored and documented. Might be a while before we see it like it used to be...where we can just go steelhead fishing when we want to and the pressure is spread out over many rivers. It took 10 years to start seeing some of our Puget Sound and San Juan Island seasons come back after the Chinook listing in 1998.

I would think it would lean more towards having the budget that allows them to properly enforce the fishery rather than just the numbers. Also the budget to get accurate redd surveys and accurate run forecasts.

Cobble Crusier-
In this era of ESA listed steelhead the triggers for CnR fisheries has changed significantly.

The Skykomish CnR season was closed because the return runs were consistently below the escapement goal. It was the intent the managers to re-established those seasons if the run sizes rebounded to those levels seen prior to the closures. However as you know that has not yet happen.

Until now the Skagit/Sauk was under the same constraints. However that has changed. NMFS has established overall allowable wild steelhead fishing impacts for the entire PS ESU which I believe is a total 4% for all fisheries. With that guideline we will be seeing winter steelhead that are pretty much like those we have this season (could be even more conservative - for example closing more tributaries) for the foreseeable future. That would mean that even if this seasons wild steelhead escapement on the Skagit system was 10,000 and a similar run was expected next year we would still have season like this year - no spring CnR.

I do understand that the State (co-manager?) and the Feds hope to develop some river specific allowable impacts that may allow some variation from that 4% allowable impacts. When those plans are to be developed or what they might allow is largely unknown.

Tight lines
Curt

Thank you so much guys. Gives me a glimmer of hope to maybe once again experience what my father and I enjoyed years ago just maybe.

Curt- Your insight is always appreciated. Thanks for joining us on this board!