Hopefully you are right in the middle of a great run of salmon on your local river as chinook, pinks and coho all steam into streams all over Western Washington.
While, summer seems to have just ended (emphatically) with the latest edition of the atmospheric river arriving this weekend and continuing into next week, it’s never too early to start previewing what we can expect during the 2023-2024 winter steelhead season.
If you recall last year, we basically didn’t have anywhere to fish for steelhead until returns began in SW Washington / Columbia River tributaries. Puget Sound rivers had virtually no fish returning and only a few rivers with a season. The Chehalis River and tribs was shutdown. The coastal rivers were mostly shutdown with most options hours away from most folks.
I first previewed the 2022-2023 winter steelhead season here. You could call that article ignorant, or maybe inflammatory. That certainly wasn’t my goal. The bottom line is that the steelhead recreational angling community doesn’t understand and neither does this blog writer, why we aren’t allowed to catch hatchery steelhead near terminal areas.
WDFW has been ramping up their efforts to monitor the returns and run health of winter steelhead on coastal streams, but also to share this data with us, which is great.
You know how much I love some fishy data!
Here’s a link to WDFW’s steelhead update page.
Here’s some of the data copy and pasted on 9/24/2023 from the above link:
| Source | Area | 2022-2023 | 5-year Average (2018-2022) | % Change | Updated Through |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hoh Redd Count (Cumulative, RM 32.1-35.6) | Olympic Peninsula | 161 | 157 | 3% | 6/26/2023 |
| Bear Creek Redd Count (Sol Duc Trib) | Olympic Peninsula | 128 | 78 | 64% | 6/26/2023 |
| Chehalis Redd Count (Cumulative WF Satsop, EF Chehalis, and SF Newaukum indexes) | Grays Harbor | 133 | 120 | 11% | 6/13/2023 |
| Wynoochee Trap Wild | Grays Harbor | 168 | 112 | 50% | 6/2/2023 |
| Bingham Creek Trap Wild | Grays Harbor | 105 | 55 | 91% | 6/30/2023 |
Are these the only places we monitor? It can’t be, right? Are these good indicators though for the health of the entire system? I mean if so…just focussing on the Chehalis and tribs for a second: That’s an increase of 11%, 50% and 91% wild steelhead redds!
Does that bode well for our 2023-2024 season possibilities or 2 years from now seasons?
Why am I drawing our attention to all of this right now?
WDFW just released the below news item a few days ago regarding a virtual town hall meeting on the topic of coastal steelhead:
Public invited to Oct. 25 virtual town hall meeting on coastal steelhead
OLYMPIA – The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is hosting a series of online public meetings this fall to discuss development of the 2023-24 coastal steelhead fishing season.
Anglers and anyone interested in steelhead management and conservation along the Washington coast can attend the first of these public meetings beginning at 6 p.m. on Oct. 25.
The primary goal of the first town hall meeting will be to solicit fishery proposals from the public for the upcoming season. Fishery managers with WDFW will also present information on the steelhead management framework, trends in coastal steelhead abundance and environmental indicators, upcoming forecasts, and summarize the 2022-23 season.
“We’ve seen declines in steelhead abundance across the Washington coast in recent years, which presents a unique challenge for fisheries in this region,” said James Losee, WDFW’s Fish Program manager for the Coastal Region. “Public input is a key part of the process for determining a path forward for coastal steelhead conservation while still offering meaningful fishing opportunities where we can.”
Staff will also present information about this year’s coastal steelhead stocks to the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission’s Fish Committee in October, followed by additional public and Commission meetings later in November. Upcoming steelhead seasons will be informed by the Statewide Steelhead Management Plan.
Members of the public can participate in the Oct. 25 meeting online or by phone; for more information on this and other upcoming virtual town halls, or to provide comments or suggestions online, please visit WDFW’s coastal steelhead webpage.
My thoughts on this virtual town hall
Look, I’m no expert in trying to influence WDFW in these public feedback meetings. For all we know, this might be just checking a box by getting public input.
I do know that we, the recreational angling public, generally waste our time in these meetings addressing superfluous topics or going on emotional rants and attacks, or talking about the good ol’ days and directly stating or implying mis-management, incompetence, etc in a way that just cuts off any heathy dialogue at the knees.
And I’m not defending the department here, but I think the best we can do in these meetings is ask questions which reveal information we are missing, but key to this whole topic.
The questions we all need to drill in on, and keep the focus on has to remain the topic of angling for hatchery steelhead in places with very low likelihood of encountering wild steelhead.
A few questions I would want to know answers to:
- What is the modeled impact on wild steelhead (mortalities) for conducting a hatchery only season on any given month on the Chehalis river tributaries with hatcheries?
- What’s the conservation criteria for having a steelhead season on Chehalis river tribs?
- What’s the co-manager criteria for having a steelhead season on Chehalis river tribs?
- Can recreational anglers fish selectively for hatchery steelhead if the co-managers don’t have enough impacts available to non-selectively fish? Or are these two things tied together?
- What’s the plan to collect data on wild steelhead impact around terminal areas? Creel checking available? Do we have test fishing available? If not, why not?
- What release mortality numbers are we using for Chehalis steelhead? Does it match what others are using?
Feel free to drop a few more ideas in the comments, but one of the very easy / simple ways we can be more organized as a recreational angling community is to just have a shared, common focussed plan for our feedback and questions.
Here’s a link to the steelhead harvest management plan on the Chehalis.