West coast salmon recovery

ringer said:
I fished Oregon every weekend through the 70s and 80s. There were huge runs of salmon and I doubt any dams were built since then. OF&G has closed hatcheries which doesn't help. Finally are starting to limit catch. About time. There are a few thousand guides and I have used many. They are good at finding and catching chinook. Think about the boats with 4 to 6 clients killing fish every day for years in the rivers. Adds up to over fishing the resource. I have made 27 trips to fish Alaska. When the commercial nets go out the chinook fishing dies. I doubt it is called bycatch when they are netting all of the fish during the season. Man is just a problem.
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I'm leaning more and more on the commercial fishery being the biggest culprit, both legal and illegal, US waters and international.

#terminalfisheriesONLY
 
neffa3 said:

I wanted to throw this out there and see what people think about this new study. The conclusion is that while we can readily identify part of the freshwater ecosystem that salmon use that are in poor condition, we can't show that improving them actually leads to salmon restoration. Salmon (this study was looking at chinook) are declining everywhere, including basins with relatively pristine habitat. The millions upon millions spent to, say, place logs in rivers, isn't going to offset to worsening ocean conditions. The real take away for me was that we need to spend more effort evaluating things that actually restore salmon populations and not things that we think restore salmon, or that just feel good.
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On the Cali coast the sea lions stack up at the river confluences and just decimate salmon. I would wonder what a graph of salmon populations before and after the protection of sea lions would look like.
 
HONEYBADGER said:
On the Cali coast the sea lions stack up at the river confluences and just decimate salmon. I would wonder what a graph of salmon populations before and after the protection of sea lions would look like.
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Certainly not an inconsequential amount, but historically there were just a many of them when salmon were booming as there are now.

They now take quite a few sea lions out at Bonneville and Willamette falls to protect sensitive runs
 
neffa3 said:
Certainly not an inconsequential amount, but historically there were just a many of them when salmon were booming as there are now.

They now take quite a few sea lions out at Bonneville and Willamette falls to protect sensitive runs
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It's the California syndrome. Protect predators, their prey numbers fall, government has to kill predators. California logic at its best and it's not confined but borders unfortunately.
 
Salmonchaser said:
Good Lord what a scary thought..... pinks for dinner. (Shudder)
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Man, when we were in Alaska we caught kings from the boat and pinks from the beach. The pinks were fabulous to eat. We actually preferred them to the kings. The silvers were our favorite, though.
 
Can we increase the Great White population to control the seal issue please lol
 
Anybody catch the BHA podcast about removing the dams on the Snake River? Pretty interesting stuff. I hope it happens.
 
The decline of chum and kings in the Bristol Bay to Yukon areas has been dramatic. Historically the Nush produces the largest run of kings in Alaska. Early this season it was limited and just a day or two ago it was changed to Catch and release only. The arrival of the trawl fleet and this decline is a perfectly obvious relationship. I’m glad it only took 20 years of steady decline for them to get after it.
I always return to this argument regarding the damn on the snake. There are no dams in Alaska on the primary salmon streams, non issue but the salmon are rapidly declining. I could care less about the damns on the Snake, take ‘em down if nothing else it probably makes an E ticket boat ride. It may help the fish. However there are still 4 huge dams on the Columbia, Bonneville, The Dallas, John Day and McNary that take a toll on migrating salmon. Nobody realistically plans on taking them down.
Com fish is where there needs to be action.
 
Salmonchaser said:
The decline of chum and kings in the Bristol Bay to Yukon areas has been dramatic. Historically the Nush produces the largest run of kings in Alaska. Early this season it was limited and just a day or two ago it was changed to Catch and release only. The arrival of the trawl fleet and this decline is a perfectly obvious relationship. I’m glad it only took 20 years of steady decline for them to get after it.
I always return to this argument regarding the damn on the snake. There are no dams in Alaska on the primary salmon streams, non issue but the salmon are rapidly declining. I could care less about the damns on the Snake, take ‘em down if nothing else it probably makes an E ticket boat ride. It may help the fish. However there are still 4 huge dams on the Columbia, Bonneville, The Dallas, John Day and McNary that take a toll on migrating salmon. Nobody realistically plans on taking them down.
Com fish is where there needs to be action.
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I generally align with your thoughts here, but I did appreciate ID's Mike Simpson when he said, "I can't tell you removing them will save the salmon, but not removing them will certainly doom them." None of us can argue those dams aren't harming those runs, it's just if they're harming them enough to be the biggest driver of populations. It could very well be that by leaving them in place, those are the last cuts in the death by a thousand cuts.
 
neffa3 said:
I generally align with your thoughts here, but I did appreciate ID's Mike Simpson when he said, "I can't tell you removing them will save the salmon, but not removing them will certainly doom them." None of us can argue those dams aren't harming those runs, it's just if they're harming them enough to be the biggest driver of populations. It could very well be that by leaving them in place, those are the last cuts in the death by a thousand cuts.
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I don't disagree on the dams inas much as it will help Snake River bound fish. It just seems like everyone thinks it's going to save the salmon et all. One only needs to look at the thousands of salmon streams from the Sacramento to the Yukon that have very few fish, decent habitats and no damns. I just don't think it'll make a great difference. I do think we should save Idaho Salmon But we can't loose sight of the rest of them. I retired from guiding because I don't want to kill another wild king. I was good at it, but last year I was doing good to get everyone a king, 10 years ago we would sort through 10 or so brought along side, taking only bright bucks with sea lice. 20 years ago we would hook twenty to thirty, it was easy to look good! One com fish boat kills more fish in a day then we do all season but still sport fishing must acknowledge they are part of the problem. I'm in danger of getting on a soap box, but until we stop flooding Costco we salmon, not much will change, snake river damns may be a good first step. I probably won't live long enough to see the benefit. I hope my grandsons can experience hooking kings until their arms give out and you lay on the beach.
 
Salmonchaser said:
I don't disagree on the dams inas much as it will help Snake River bound fish. It just seems like everyone thinks it's going to save the salmon et all. One only needs to look at the thousands of salmon streams from the Sacramento to the Yukon that have very few fish, decent habitats and no damns. I just don't think it'll make a great difference. I do think we should save Idaho Salmon But we can't loose sight of the rest of them. I retired from guiding because I don't want to kill another wild king. I was good at it, but last year I was doing good to get everyone a king, 10 years ago we would sort through 10 or so brought along side, taking only bright bucks with sea lice. 20 years ago we would hook twenty to thirty, it was easy to look good! One com fish boat kills more fish in a day then we do all season but still sport fishing must acknowledge they are part of the problem. I'm in danger of getting on a soap box, but until we stop flooding Costco we salmon, not much will change, snake river damns may be a good first step. I probably won't live long enough to see the benefit. I hope my grandsons can experience hooking kings until their arms give out and you lay on the beach.
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Think of how many commercial licenses/leases could be bought out for the cost to remove just one of those dams?
 
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