Thanks to the readers below for expressing their opinions. I will endeavor to post all letters that I think will move the site forward. I appreciate it when you take your time to write to express your thoughts about matters important to sportfishing and this web site.
-David Weitl, Statewide Editor
The reason hatchery employees club hatchery fish is to prevent them from spawning with the natives. This has nothing to do with keeping escapement down to preserve jobs, or harm the ecosystem (conspiracy theorists relax). Hatchery fish are genetically different from the wild
fish in our area rivers (their strain was developed evolutionarily on their own rivers. . .aka Chambers Creek strain of steelhead planted statewide). Therefore, the result of hatchery spawning interactions with the native stock is a DILUTION of the genetic integrity of the wild
fish populations, thereby destroying the genetic makeup of fish which evolved over millions of years to survive in that particular river system. Loss of this genetic integrity is perhaps the largest (and least understood I might add) threat to wild salmon and steelhead populations in the Pacific Northwest. This process has been studied and restudied and it is a valid concern, so the best way to avoid spawning interactions with the wild fish is to kill the hatchery fish when they return. It's solid science, proven effective, so please, for the love
of our wild stocks, put your guns and pens down and come to understand what is happening. The headlines-grabbers have once again proven that "A little bit of information can be quite dangerous!" Please have the sense to investigate the situation before you pass judgment.
P.S.
Do you know what the deal is with the trawlers operating in north Puget Sound? I understand they have been scouring the bottom in about 100' of water in the Eglon area. Are they taking shrimp? Naturally, this is the last thing our already decimated inland fishery needs. The sound has yet to recover from the trawler-rape of the 70's & 80's.
Murphy Rhodes
A Once Avid Now Disgusted Steelhead Fisherman,
Charles Martin's comments and your stance regarding the proposed wdfw rules changes increasing the daily and seasonal limits for wild steelhead on the Olympic Peninsula are well founded. There is no good reason to allow further harvest of wild steelhead on the Peninsula or anywhere else in Washington. The Department is attempting to give up an opportunity to proactively conserve a run of wild fish while it is still reasonably healthy. Must we always wait until a run is in crisis before we act to protect it?
Ramon Vanden Brulle
I am an avid fisherman, and have also guided in this state and have invested tens of thousands of dollars in fishing and contributed money to 696. The point is you should be ashamed of yourself, there is no way any true sportsmen would want to go out and freezer fish for native steelhead.
Good fishing to ya Dave.
Hey, I'm just the messenger here. If you have read my editorials since I started this site back in '95, you would know where I stand on the issue of killing wild steelhead.
-DW, Editor
A couple of things:
Dear Editor:
With all the fuss over hatchery funding (i.e. Reiter Ponds), why can't the state of Washington use a specific scratch lottery game to help supplement funding in the same way that they do to build ballparks for our professional sports teams? It would be an easy and convenient way for everyone from sportfishers to commercials to electric ratepayers to help insure that critical funding for critical programs such as Reiter Ponds summer steelhead programs exists now and in the future. Especially with I-695 passing, the Governor will be looking for funds anywhere he can!
It will be interesting to see what the Governor's real priorities are, condoms for hookers and needle exchange programs, or salmon and steelhead.
Dave Weitl, PublisherWDFW Clubbing Salmon on Nooksack
This is not much of a fishing report as it is a reply to your story of clubbing salmon. This has been common practice at the South Fork hatchery for years. This hatchery is run by the Lummi Nation funded in part if not all by the state of Washington. After questioning hatchery management about this practice, I was told that the eggs were sold to bait companies and the fish were sold to fertilizer companies. The reason for this was simply to keep the returning hatchery fish out of the native fishes' spawning grounds. If the fish were allowed to escape the hatchery would lose some or all of it's State funding. This is how our WDFW control the number spawners in the river system. If you or I tried anything like that we would be arrested for blackmail!
Thanks to: Bob McKayClubbing Salmon is Good
To whom it may concern:
Thanks to: Brian
Please print this on your web page so that people will quit pointing fingers and come to understand how to manage our fish populations. Hatchery fish are different from wild fish, behaviorally, genetically, biologically. We must understand this fact if we are ever going to save our wild stocks.
Trawlers in the Puget Sound?
Dear Editor,
Thanks to Murphy Rhodes
A concerned fisherman
Declining Steelhead
I would like to submit my input concerning the decline of steelhead in the area rivers. I have fished the Puyallup river system since the early sixties and in all the years I've seen less access to the rivers and less fish, especially since the Boldt decision nearly thirty years ago. I can remember as a boy tank trucks dumping fish in the area that once was called the blue riffle now gone due to water management, and the lack of fish being released from Clark's Creek hatchery. There is also the increase of the number of nets used by the indians that strangle the entrance to the river. The stiuck river was at one time a viable steelhead stream now not even fished.
Thanks to John L. Daschofsky
I feel that the decision wa a bad one and we need to take a stand to reverse it. I feel
we could use another avenue to allow tribal fishing, give each of them "free"
licenses for life for each member and that they then have to abide by the same rules and regulations as any other "American". Would this be so bad? I think not.
I too have small children and I fear they may never have the chance to enjoy the feeling of hooking into a steelhead on a river that at one time was the best in the state. It is a crying shame that we have let it get this bad so fast and we must make it known we will no longer stand for it. I thank you for your time.
John L. Daschofsky
More on the Wild Steelhead Kill Proposal
Editor,
Thanks to: Ramon Vanden Brulle
However, you missed an opportunity to stand up for conservation in your report about new steelhead regulations on the Hoh River. Dorsal fin height is an irresponsibly unreliable indicator of whether a steelhead is artificially or naturally bred. It will at best cause confusion, and at worst invite poaching, intentional and/or unintentional. The 2 1/4" dorsal measurment will apply to all steelhead, regardless of size or weight, it will be largely self-enforced, and the time it takes to measure, judge, and debate the height of a fish's dorsal fin could result in higher mortality for wild fish that are ultimately released.
If nwfishing.com believes in conservation and promoting wild steelhead catch and release (your comments on wdfw's proposed rules changes make it clear you do), then you should encourage your readers to only keep steelhead with clipped adipose or ventral fins, on any river, including the Hoh.
Communications Director
Washington Trout
Duvall
You Should be Ashamed of Yourself, Dave
Hey Dave,
Thanks to: Russ Wise
Let's face it, most people would still be buying licenses if we had healthy numbers of fish to catch and release. I mean heck if you just want to eat steelhead you can buy it farm raised in the store for a hell of a lot less money than it will cost you to go catch it or go kill hatchery steelhead. As far as your ability to keep an injured fish, in the case of most fisherpersons this actually only happens once or twice in their entire fishing career, provided they actually make an attempt to set up their gear in a way to minimize this. Let's say that you do injure one. It a 0% chance of living if you bonk it over the head. Even if it does die in the system it will provide food for other for other steelhead & salmon which is greatly needed in a time where our habitat and spawning grounds are being degraded by over-population and industry. This to me is just a desperate attempt for some to figure out a way to keep a native. Believe me, I have learned from these same unethical mistakes.
However the state needs to start managing for maximum sustained escapement not maximum sustained harvest. The days of any kind of subsistence fishing are no longer feasible and the sooner everyone in the fishing arena owns up to that the sooner we will be on the road to recovery and I mean everyone: sportfishing, commercial fishing, tribal fishing, land developers, logging, and last but certainly not least the private sector meaning you and I Joe Homeowner.
In closing I would just say I would rather have a BLAST catching and releasing 3 or 4 native brutes a day than being relegated to slowly killing them off and obviously I am not the only one who feels this way because there are over 30 guide operations in this state that are strictly native realease and almost all of them are booked up during native season.
Dave I hope you will post this on your site as I have read your site since its inception and have noticed that you seem to give everyone fair press however if you do not I will still have gotten my point across to you which is what counts
hope fully you will think the whole thing over.
Killing Wild Steelhead a Mistake
I'm very bothered by the state's proposed 2 fish kill of wild steelhead. This seems just to please the rich & visiting. I can't think of any place in this state that can sustain a two fish wild kill and not have serious present & most of all, long term damage to stocks! Think of the visitor to Seattle who has a friend book a trip : kills four wild peninsula trophies in two days, then goes back to Seatac and says good bye..... forever ... because the fishing just isn't what it used to be on the Washington coastal streams.
Thanks to Ted Prociv for the following letter:
Or should we change to year-round statewide catch & release? Yes. If a system can support a kill the state could sell a special, controlled # of single fish trophy tags for say $200.
Sierra Club a Fraud
One of the things I find most disturbing was the support by the Seirra Club of the Anti- net ban group. This position is contrary to their mission statement. The group was short-sighted in not considering the issue of by-catch which includes 'protected' species, birds and seals. Commercial fishing in this state is not a viable full time living. The Post Intelligencer profiled some commercial people. They do this part
time. Seirra Club criticized the intiative as not being the whole issue. Of course it is not. It is a part of the issue. As far as I am concern my support of the Seirra Club has ended.
Thanks to: WoodySierra Club and Steelhead
Dear Editor,
Thanks to Lee Getzewich of Auburn, WA
First, I wanted to make a reply to Woody's comments entitled "Sierra Club a Fraud". While I totally agree with his views about the issues and share is his disappointment with the local Sierra Club Chapter for their short sightedness and own special interests, there is some hope on the horizon. They have elected a new chair for 2000 who happens to be a very close personal friend of mine, who also happens to be an avid fisherman. (Catch and RELEASE fisherman, that is). I have long resisted his pitches for membership for the very reasons Woody mentioned, but with him in a position of influence we may see a shift in their policies towards "non forest related" environmental issues. Perhaps even a melding of different environmental factions....which is what the anti-environment development interests are REALLY afraid of.
The second comment I wanted to make is regarding the decline in Steelhead fishing participation. All I want to say there is.....HELLO!! ANYBODY HOME!!!! Look at your own reports.....No fish = no fishermen. It's not rocket science. The average number of fishing hours put in per fish caught is way up. Combine that with the frustration of being subjected to ever stricter rules, regulations, and closures while tribes scoop out fish by the netful! Its made GIVING UP steelhead fishing a method for reducing
stress and depression.
Funding for Hatcheries in Trouble
Thanks to: Chris Buckley - Spokane, WA
We can't let cheap licence plates eliminate our sportfishing heritage! I have twin boys. Only one has actually caught a steelhead and I feel time is rapidly slipping away for the other boy to experience the thrill.
Nov. 27, 1999 -- 11:09 pm
Response to Publisher comments:
As much as I agree Salmon and Steelhead are important I feel it is equally or even more important to curb the spread of sexually transmitted diseases by having condoms available to anybody who needs them. Salmon and steelhead are important northwest resources for both industry and tourism, but so are people. Needle exchange programs are important to keep the spread of HIV and other blood-borne illnesses down and also the help those who are in need. Come on Dave, some people don't even have the luxury to have the money and free time to fish. Have a heart. Both of those programs are important. Maybe even more important than Salmon and Steelhead. Just ask the
parents of a son dying from AIDS becuase of a bad needle.
Thanks to Matthew W. KaphanResponse to Mathew's comments:
In response to Matthew W. Kaphan's opinion on what program is more important, I feel that by subsidizing drug users and promiscuity, we have lost sight of what is important to the state of Washington! He says some people can't afford to fish. While this may be true, are we talking about the same people who want the state to help pay for their illegal and illicit activities? If you cant afford a fishing licence, then you definitely can't afford prostitutes and heroine!! I do feel sorry for the many
people stricken with AIDS and other STD's, but to fund their promiscuity and drug abuse at the expense of our heritage is absurd!! I feel my idea about scratch lottery tickets to fund hatcheries is a great one. If you care about the future of fishing in this state, buy some tickets. If not, go buy some drugs, and share them with a prostitute in the motel you just rented by the hour! Oh! My mistake! You can't afford that, right?
Thanks to BuckBuckley
Washington Fisher turns Canadian
This is a sad letter. It is sad due to the fact that for the first time I have bought an annual CANADIAN license. I did this because I am a catch and release fisherman and enjoy the love of playing a fish regardless of how many/where I am fishing. The fact of the matter is the people in the state of Washington DO NOT have any idea what resources are or how to protext and save them. we had a chance to start the rebuilding proces and the people chose NOT to do this by voting no on I-696. I realize this didn't address the issue we have with the Indian nets but it was a start regardless. When is the state of Washington going to step up and say NO, this is not acceptable to put nets in waters? The amount of evidence is overwhelming and yet we continue to see more and more nets in our rivers. People MUST take a stance and say enough is enough, it is time to stop the insanity of stupidity and get programs in place which equate to ZERO nets inrivers and the salt so that runs can survive. The local sport fisherman can get by with adapting to catch and release as long as there are no nets swarming our fishing grounds and leaving a miniscule 46 of 45,000 fish because the rest are stuck rotting in a net somewhere. The Canadians realized this and BANNED the nets in the Frazer system which 3 years later are showing signs of OUTSTANDING fishing. Does this not wake anyone up??????? Our "politicians", and I say that very loud need to get out of the political arena and wake up. PERIOD. Feel free to EMail me at my address ... spani@pstbbs.com
Thanks to: Chuck Spani
