Up next in 10
2024 Puget Sound Winter CHINOOK SALMON Update, Salmon Predators, and MORE
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Feb 5, 2025
Live stream to discuss with data the 2024 Puget Sound Winter Blackmouth season. How did we get here? What's going on with our blackmouth and where are we going? Did you know that March 6th, 2024 was one of the 6 best days on the water fishing for chinook in Marine Area 10 with large angler participation in over 10 years? We also highlight just how much impact on salmon marine mammal predation is having. We need to discuss an urgent public action from NOAA and continuing to invest money into raising additional hatchery salmon for endangered Orcas and fisheries. I will also discuss Westport / Ocean bottomfishing, SW WA Steelhead and of course, take all of your questions. NOAA Study on Pinniped predation - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14984-8 Hatchery funding topic - https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/hatcheries-yield-more-salmon-endangered-killer-whales-new-analysis-open-comment Prey increases for Orcas - https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/prey-increase-program-southern-resident-killer-whales MA11 page - https://pnwbestlife.com/puget-sound-salmon-fishing/marine-area-11-chinook-salmon-fishing/ Marine Weather Safety - https://pnwbestlife.com/marine-weather-safety/ Follow me on IG: @pacificnwbestlife Twitter/X: pnwbestlife Facebook: /pnwbestlife email: kyle@pnwbestlife.com website: pnwbestlife.com
View Video Transcript
0:02
welcome to another p&w best life live stream I uh was really encouraged by
0:08
everyone who attended the last one we talked about north of Falcon and looked at all the forecast slides and
0:14
everything going on there many of you found it after the fact and watch the reported version uh which is really cool
0:20
uh excited to connect to all of you in this new way and
0:26
today uh we'll give we'll give people a few minutes to to uh to find our our
0:32
live stream hopefully and and get get connected we of course be taking questions again but uh today I really
0:38
want to talk about our Blackmouth season that's uh that's going really strong uh
0:44
lot to say about what's going on with our pugon Blackmouth uh and there's a lot of a lot
0:51
of things it means for our future and kind of where we're uh where we're going with this fishery and and uh ways to
0:58
enhance it and look at it uh there's also some urgent action to take regarding our our hatcheries and the
1:04
funding for our hatcheries that I just became aware of yesterday uh there's a public response some some I'll show you
1:11
all what what uh you need to do but uh there's an email we need to send to Noah
1:17
to let them know we want them to continue putting money into raising atery fish for Orca uh
1:25
survival as opposed to doing things like cutting fishing to enhance uh pray
1:31
availability for for orcas so we'll talk about that uh definitely want to talk
1:36
about the Predator issue which we I brought up last week and I even got some
1:42
comments saying like oh where show me your sources on the Predator issue and uh I I posted some links in in the
1:49
comment section from last week's stream but I've since then I've spent a lot more time digging into it and uh I found
1:56
the uh the Noah uh study that was done I believe 2017 and kind of poured through
2:02
that I've got some some visuals to show you all regarding that so what we can just talk about some of the numbers and
2:07
what's going on with these this Predator Deluge in Puget sown uh and then we'll just talk about
2:14
Westport a little bit you know it's been uh it's been open since last Saturday March 9th but the weather uh has been
2:22
pretty terrible uh I guess today's March 10th so so March 9th was yesterday uh
2:27
yeah so the weather's been pretty snotty and uh but but I'm looking forward to some some Westport opportunity we've got
2:33
all this wind and these storms that have kind of mucking up I know people who want to be on the water yesterday Puget
2:39
to for Blackmouth but uh if you look at what's coming behind it it looks like there's a window of opportunity and so
2:46
we'll look at that also briefly talk about some of the Southwest Washington steelhead Kitz River some stuff like
2:52
that so all right there's a few of you on that's all I need uh as always uh um
2:58
feel free to just drop your comments in the in the chat here any questions uh that you might have and and I'll I'll
3:05
interrupt and kind of jump into that but we'll kind of Follow That progression starting with starting with the
3:11
Blackmouth uh fishery so you know this like I got this was my uh smallish
3:17
keeper from uh from Thursday I fished Wednesday and Thursday and uh I
3:23
unfortunately lost some much larger fish than uh than than than this one and uh
3:31
but I saw you know I saw a legitimate 13lb Hatchery fish bonked in front of me
3:37
and verified you know they weighed I know I know the person through another person uh and got that validated so it's
3:44
funny I posted this uh you know this this comment on this video on YouTube shorts and and people were like oh
3:50
there's no you're wrong there's no mid- teens Blackmouth you know in in pet Town blah blah blah there's no mid teen Shook
3:57
and during Blackmouth season like no you're very wrong about that because uh not only did did we know that they're
4:04
they're being caught um but you just you just you you just know the difference when you hook into a quality 10 plus
4:09
pound shinuk salmon compared to these these little guys and uh and yeah so I
4:15
so between Wednesday and Thursday I lost three of them uh totally ridiculous uh
4:20
you know I hate losing nice quality shinamon uh but I did get a keeper each
4:25
day and look it's been it's been steady in 11's been okay but 10 has really when
4:34
the weather has cooperated 10 and what's been going on in Jeff head has really been uh you got you gotta say it's on
4:42
fire I mean it's truly been uh exceptional but let me show you some of the data from the cre surveys that wfw
4:49
has been putting out there let's just start with 10 take a look at this take a look at this
4:56
so here's the these graphs are up on pnwb bestlife.com under the Mariner 10
5:02
shinook salmon fishing page and there's also Mariner 11 shook salmon fishing page so you could see these update daily
5:08
so you can see what the fleet is doing that that wfw is cre checking uh but
5:13
check out these numbers so this one right here right this this was Wednesday
5:19
36 after it been shut down after that kind of initial opener with that bad weather the thing is the hot spot's been
5:25
Jeff head and Jeff head is completely exposed to a south wind which is what we had last weekend again this weekend and
5:32
you could see you know yesterday 39 uh much less uh participation for a
5:38
Saturday uh but look at the catch look at the catch is still outstanding for Less participation so you know this this
5:45
is what's going on right now in this Blackmouth fishery is is fantastic but but look at this day right here 36 this
5:52
is last Wednesday so this is around 35 fish cre checked at wfw uh around 70
6:00
Anglers participated that that's the the metric wfw likes to talk about is the
6:06
catch per unit of effort or cpue which is a fancy way of saying um shinook uh
6:13
caught divided by Anglers who uh who participated and uh you you basically
6:20
could say that it's almost 0.5 it's almost .5 so almost one Chinook per
6:26
every two Anglers that went out these are these are great great numbers in
6:32
fact I I was talking to another gentleman I was like I was like man these are these are fantastic numbers
6:37
what uh and I was just curious because I have all these numbers in my uh database
6:42
I just went through and and searched them and in fact March 6 2024 is the sixth best cpue right uh
6:53
shinook prangler rate in Marine area 10 uh since uh 2013 so I've got 11 years
7:03
of data and since 2013 there's only been five better days
7:08
total in Marine area 10 when the angler count uh has been above above 50 so no
7:15
small sample size stuff here no like 10 Anglers went out and they caught five fish but I'm talking big days lots of
7:22
Anglers on the water this is the sixth best day on the water in the last 11
7:28
years that's that's incredible that's incredible uh there's been some really
7:36
really solid Blackmouth fishing in Puget town let me show you uh let me show you
7:43
Mariner 11 here we go so Mariner
7:50
11 it hasn't been as good Marin 11 hasn't had a March season in a little
7:55
while but there's fish being caught if you find the bait you're you're going to find the fish if you just fish all the
8:03
regular spots troll back and forth with the fleet when there's no nothing marking well it's going to be a tough
8:10
tough day there's a lot of folks doing that but for those who are finding the bait they're finding the fish and and
8:18
it's been good it's been good so uh you know definitely if you have an
8:23
opportunity you want to get out there and take advantage of this because this is a truly truly great black mous season
8:31
that is developing for us here and we're only we're only a week a week
8:37
in um I will say another Dynamic here to to um uh to look at that we always
8:44
concerned about that we're always concerned about
8:50
is the sublegal encounters right uh if you remember lately we've been opening
8:56
these in January right or or early February and then it gets closed down after a
9:01
week because of the sublegal right we haven't always had this sublegal encounter quota stuff that's going on but right now we do and that's a
9:08
different conversation about uh what that's all about I don't want to get into that here
9:13
I just go on a ramp with it that wouldn't be very entertaining but we have a sublegal encounter quota and in
9:20
the past we've been shut down because of that quota being hit because the reality
9:26
is when when this opens up earlier in the year my little my little Google map
9:31
of Puget Town these uh these fish are out migrating throughout pet town right so
9:37
they're they're heading north they're going out through the through Admiral the inlet they're going out through the
9:42
straight right well by March a lot of those fish those smaller fish have have
9:48
flushed out they've made their way out and so what's left are there's still going to be some sual around but there's
9:55
a lot of adults around um relative to the sual so and so you have a situation
10:03
where we're catching fish we're catching these adult salmon and we're not hooking
10:08
a lot of sublegal now I don't know yet I don't know what the test data numbers is are from wfw after after the two
10:15
weekends and the weekdays but from the little breadcrumbs that I've got I
10:21
indicate that we're not hooking a lot of sublegal and and the numbers are way
10:26
closer to one: one one to two than than what they have been in the past where they've been like 1 to 10 I
10:33
remember a day in January it was almost like one to 20 a couple years ago I mean they you know we hooked a lot of these
10:40
sublegal to get to adults and that's not happening right now and that's great because that means that the season has a
10:46
chance combined with you know crappy weather the last two weekends the season has a chance to go much further into
10:52
March particularly as there's a lot of other things you can do right now you've got uh which we're gonna talk about
10:57
we're about West Coast and or Westport and bottom fishing we're going to talk about uh steelhead in Southwest
11:03
Washington but there's just there's a lot going on that that the Anglers can do right now you're not in January it's
11:10
pretty much the only game in town right so uh I'm hopeful very hopeful that the season's going to continue going and
11:16
it's good fishing uh it's not crappy fishing so uh you know there's there's
11:21
there's days in the summer uh on Marine area uh you know 11 that look like this
11:27
there's days in the summer that don't even look close to what March six look like for a mariner 10 so um if you have
11:35
a chance you got a boat that you have get it out of storage get it tuned up get the trailer all working you get out
11:41
there and take advantage of this while it's going uh a lot of folks will be asking where exactly are all these fish
11:47
being hooked well it's pretty public knowledge in Marine area 10 that Jeff head has been really solid Jeff head the
11:53
southside of Jeff head Etc um in terms of what people are using I can just tell
11:58
you what what's been in my network what's been a really hot hot lure and of
12:04
course for me I like I like to spin anchovies in a helmet that's like my go-to I I'm a Believer in that but I
12:10
have not been getting bit on the anro in the helmet nearly uh the extent as this
12:16
this guy right here has been producing this is a 3.5 uh cookies and cream spoon and uh
12:23
you know some other people have been using a 4.0 I know the 3.0 has been working too but I've been using the 3.5
12:29
and it's it's it's out fishing all the other um offerings that I've put down or
12:35
other people in the boat with me have put down um or some of the folks in my network so you know give that give that
12:41
a shot and uh and hopefully you can in terms of Flasher I've been using blue and purple but most of my bites have
12:47
been on a blue flasher uh this year so you you just never know but but you know you go with that Blue Crush flasher that
12:53
I talk about a lot on my on my website my other other videos and that cookies and cream SPO spoon you're going to hook
12:59
some shinook uh you know the a lot of a lot of it's been in 120 130 ft of water
13:06
uh you know look for bait look you're fishing five feet from the bottom right you drop down let that downrigger
13:13
actually hit bottom bring it up a few feet try to stay on the depth line you know I I have a
13:19
um a Garmin autopilot which really helps with that helps me nail that depth line
13:25
it's really hard to fish if you're if you're person driving the boat is going up and down the slope because you can go
13:31
from 110 to 150 really fast if you're trying to operate a downrigger that can be really challenging so a lot of videos
13:38
on my uh channel that how to do this this different stuff Blackmouth videos downrigger fishing for salmon videos out
13:45
there uh so so give it give it a give it a try feel free to drop me a comment or question if you have any questions about
13:51
technique here um I'm assuming a lot of this stuff is pretty easy pretty knowledgeable stuff and um but if if you
13:58
don't know how just definitely reach out ask because I'm I'm always I I I don't
14:03
really ignore anyone that that ask me for help on this stuff so um yeah we all
14:10
right so let's see here so that's so we covered the uh kind of how the black mouse Seasons going um yeah so let me
14:19
just talk a little bit more about this out migration thing so the idea that uh the recreational angler Community had
14:26
and those that are really plugged in the process was like hey you know we've got all these small shinook flushing out of
14:32
pet town in January and February let's delay the opening into March and then hopefully can go through through April
14:40
and so far that is playing out in our favor in a really really strong way um I
14:46
personally have had some some questions about is Blackmouth fishing in Puget
14:52
Sound still viable like what is this a is this a long-term thing right or should we try to move our impacts some
14:58
to some other month of the year uh you know and once you move them you're probably not getting them back right so
15:05
uh you know that's been that's been a conversation that uh that various folks have had and one of the reasons why
15:11
we've been having that is because of this graph here um which is the this is
15:17
the number of delayed released Chinook in Puget town so what am I talking about
15:23
we're delayed release shinook so uh when you keep shinook and the Hatchery longer
15:29
right you don't release them as fingerlings you you let them grow to to to you know closer to a yearling size
15:36
they tend to stay they tend to residualized in Puget town now you know schnook are uh there's no rule here with
15:43
with with their uh necessarily what they're doing because uh you know sh could go they could go out to the
15:50
straight they could go west and go up the west coast of Vancouver Island to Southeast Alaska they could hang out in
15:56
the San Juans they could go up to the straight of Georgia right they can go and then they can come back there's no
16:02
rules like like oh these Chinook stand fwn these ones migrate up right they're
16:07
they're going to fall they're following the feed around right so they're going to be wherever the feed is but the
16:15
uh the what uh so I'm a part of this group I'm a part of this this Advisory
16:21
Group called PSR FF o c it's a pug toown wreckfish
16:28
enhanc fund oversight committee and this was established by the legislature uh to
16:35
oversee a bucket of of funds uh and give recommendations about it that was was
16:41
meant to be spent on enhancing the recreational fishing opportunity outside
16:46
of the summer season so you pet Town's a long history of Summer shook fishing
16:51
being fantastic and looking at how can we extend this out Beyond like this sort
16:57
of peak months of like you know June July into September Etc with shut coo all that so we got this fund and a lot
17:06
of the money in this fund gets spent on raising yearling shinook right uh but
17:12
something and this was around 99 2000 I believe uh and so I I joined the
17:18
committee two years ago and uh you know I'm involved in these discussions about
17:24
what to do with these funds but what what what some of the things that come out is in the history of this is that
17:30
the survival rate of these yearling Chinook has plummeted from late 90s to
17:38
uh to to to recent history so uh we're spending a lot of money it takes a lot more money to keep the shnook longer at
17:44
the Hatchery to get to a yearling right uh you got to deal with potential disease you got to deal with feeding
17:51
them the entire time like it's more money to keep these shnook around but when you release them they're more
17:57
likely to stay around it down and get caught during the the winter Black mous season that's kind of the that's kind of the idea right well when the survival
18:05
rate of these things plummeted uh and So you you're releasing a lot of smols and and they're not coming back as adults
18:11
and they're not getting caught in the winter fishery there's a lot of what's going on right and if you've been
18:17
following uh following along here you know that a similar phenomenon's been happening with uh with with our steeled
18:25
buit down steeled you know Hatchery survival rates have have plummeted in the last 20 years and so we've shifted
18:33
some of that money from yearling schnook to the the fingerling shinook right let
18:39
me pull up another another graph for you and part of that is just even though we can raise more of the fingerlings more
18:46
of them die off right so uh but you it's cheaper and so it's it's cheaper to get
18:52
uh higher number of adults back uh available for orcas available for
18:57
fisheries and and uh making it back to the Hatchery so let me just show you uh
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this is a graph of schnook released imp pit Sound by wfw so
19:08
you could see and this number I believe was even higher before 2008 so the the Orange is the yearling shnook releases
19:14
right and it's just been we had a little brief little period of little bumps but it's just been squeezed it's been
19:19
squeezed out it's harder you kind of got to squint to see it on this graph but it's getting smaller and smaller as uh
19:25
it's just not been very viable I think I did some math calculated um to to produce one
19:31
Blackmouth keeper uh during the the Blackmouth season these we would spend
19:37
around $2,000 per keeper um in raising it and all all the
19:44
die off that'll happen the predation and and what it would take to get that keeper into um into on on an Anglers
19:52
boat being retained right so uh that those aren good numbers those and the numbers on fingerlings are much better
19:57
so uh there there is some debate about what what are we doing with this these programs what are we doing with this
20:03
season especially given the fact that they haven't been very good in the last few years right they've been they've
20:08
been closed very quickly because of the sublegal encounters things like that so I've had a lot of questions myself about
20:14
what are we doing where are we going with this whole uh Blackmouth fishery now let me show you another graph this
20:20
is all sources shinook released in P town I want you to think about this
20:26
number think about this number so uh this is 2022 there was right over 50 million 50 million okay keep keep keep
20:34
this number in your head 50 million uh schnook released pit sound all all
20:39
sources okay uh now I I started digging through the Noah study as I said at the
20:46
beginning of the stream um looking at the what you know the the Marine
20:51
predation issue that that Noah published a lot of data on a lot of findings on back in 2017 uh somewh controversial
20:58
although a lot of us recreational Anglers we already knew many of these things that a lot of our uh our our our
21:05
salmon were ending up as um seal sea lion poo and not not enhancing the
21:13
Fisheries the way that the way that you would expect and so here's one of the graphs from
21:18
their uh a second from their presentation or their paper um and I'll link it in the uh
21:25
description of when this goes um goes on to YouTube so you can read it for yourself this is the Stacked graph of
21:33
all the smol releases up to 2015 and I
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you know you basically can look at this and go oh petan's released or the Salish SE in total that's this one here it's
21:46
like army green kind of color is around 70 million smes okay 70 million SM so
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petown 50 million another 20 million uh to comprise all the Sal so keep that
21:58
number in your mind 50 million P Town 70 million Sor C now I want to show you I
22:06
want to show you another graph that's going to blow your mind this is the number of
22:12
salmon estimated by Noah that are consumed by harbor seals okay uh this is this ends at 2015
22:21
but you see the the graph is going up to the right so what is this now uh this is probably much higher right it's probably
22:28
it's probably out here uh but you're talking conservatively over 30
22:35
million salmon consumed by harbor seals and and it's
22:41
funny because you know when uh when we're out there fishing yeah sometimes a seal will take our our salmon but often
22:48
times it's a it's a big old sea lion or something like that and it's very visible or you see sea lines out there
22:53
eating salmon well harbor seals primarily consume smols the
22:59
biomass the tonnage of what they consume is actually is actually pretty small compared to Sea lines killer whales um
23:07
Etc but the numbers are are off the charts and uh I was
23:13
looking at another paper that showed that from the from uh from tagging these Critters they see that most of the
23:19
consumption is happening in the evening and the night time so you're not you're not seeing what's going on you're not seeing what's actually happening but
23:25
this but we know uh from these scientific studies that 30 million plus
23:32
salmon in the Salish sea are being consumed by harbor seals now remember
23:37
that's almost that's almost equal to the total amount of smols that that wfw is
23:44
producing in hatcheries which was around 50 million right um that's an insane
23:51
number that's an insane number that are being consumed by Harbor Shields I just
23:56
sat through the north of Falon meeting uh the kickoff forecast and we talk about the environment the Marine
24:02
survival we talk about Hatchery production we talk about all these things we don't we don't bring up we
24:08
don't bring up predation it's not even mentioned one time I tried to ask a question about it but this The Sound
24:14
audio was kind of garble and apparently they didn't get it but um I'm gonna go in person on uh on Wednesday to Olympia
24:21
and if there's another opportunity to bring it up but but but why AR why aren't we talking more about this 30
24:28
million consumed by harbor seals now in wfw uh defense they did a very very nice
24:36
presentation on the topic last year north of Falcon and they talked about
24:41
the different options with the Marine Mammal protection act things that they're trying to do outside of lethal
24:47
removal uh but and I don't have all the answers here man we need answers to this
24:54
and and I have I'm I've always started to dig into the Aven predation which is also significant that's before the
25:00
harbor seals even get to take their chunk and and so what we're seeing is if
25:06
any of our salmon or steel Ed spend a lot of time in Puget Sound they don't
25:12
stand a very good chance of surviving that's probably what's happening with our pound steel head Hatchery fish wild
25:19
fish whatever that's what's happening with our our why even though we've jacked up our Hatchery
25:25
production where's it going we've restored habitat for for Wildfish in
25:30
many ways we have much more work to do there but but where's it all going well it's it's becoming uh seal poo is the
25:38
bottom line of where it's going and so we we have we have some work to do I don't know all the answers are but I I'm
25:45
going to continue to uh to drive this and I and I know others are as well we want to make sure that there there is
25:51
going there are going to be answers at some point to this because this is just not sustainable right we have an ecosystem that's way out of balance
25:58
uh there's another graph I didn't I didn't pull up here but the the the population in this period of of harbor seals has grown by
26:05
10x um from from from where it was in in where this graph starts in 1975 so so
26:11
see yeah we we have an ecosystem that's out of bound we have challenges here just as stewards of the resources um we
26:19
there there's work that that needs to be done here um so yeah let's let's talk
26:26
about uh let's talk for a second about this Noah uh request okay so got this email
26:34
from pitan Anglers that uh there's and I've got the
26:40
article up here uh study revealing that hatcheries yield more salmon for endangered killer
26:46
whales and new analysis open for comment so uh just so you know uh the draft environmental impact
26:53
cor responds to a 2022 court order which found defici agencies and Noah Fisheries 2019 analysis of domestic actions
27:00
connected to specific salmon treaty agreement translation uh the Wildfish folks
27:06
sued uh sued these different organizations to get them to stop raising uh Hatchery fish and and so now
27:15
they're having to reopen it and reexamine it they came up with four options for federal funding that they're
27:21
taking public comment on right now uh number one is you just discontinue sched
27:27
funding to increase uh orca killer prey number two you keep producing Hatchery
27:34
salmon to increase killer whale prey this is the preferred alternative that's what we've been doing since
27:41
2020 uh habitat based prey increase redirecting funding from Hatchy production that's cut hatch repoduction
27:47
to Habitat restoration that would increase the abundance of salmon produced in the Wild by improving habitat we've already tried that for the
27:54
last 15 years and by the way we have a lot more work to do should we should not stop doing that work but in the meantime
28:01
uh we definitely need to continue to uh put money into into into raising more fish for hatcheries but number four
28:08
truly an awful option being proposed here reduce fishing redirecting funding from Hatchery production to reduce shook
28:14
salmon fishery to leave more salmon prey available for killer whales well I have another graph for you this is the also
28:22
from the Noah study this ISS in the Salish sea this black line is fish fies
28:28
biomass consumed fisheries and over here are uh This is Wild uh salmon natural
28:34
origin salmon this is Hatchery origin Sam consumed total consumed by Predators
28:41
okay so what do you see here since 1980 the amount consumed by Fisheries
28:48
steadily decreased right we're at almost 20 less than 20% of what it used to be
28:54
and then you see the the wild Hatcher uh origin consumption salmon the total
29:01
consumption of salmon has increased right so as we have cut Fisheries uh The Marine Mammal Predators
29:09
have stepped up their game and taken our place to um and and so there's not been
29:15
a net benefit for availability of salmon uh for orcas or just for avoiding
29:22
Extinction so you have we the idea of cutting Fisheries it's already been
29:27
tried it's been it's what we've been dealing with for the past 40 years we've been cutting Fisheries in the Sailor sea
29:35
and salmon are not bouncing back so uh we have more work to do here we we can't
29:40
keep trying the same thing and failing at it um so there you go that's uh all I
29:48
I think all I want to say about that for the time being but but please th this
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comment public comment period uh expires uh midday on on Monday and so uh you
30:00
need to if you care about this uh here's here's what you need to do uh you can
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contact the project manager this phone number or very easy drop an email
30:12
hatcheries dopu comment noah.gov and let them know option number
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two is what you prefer no option for we've got to do something option number two is where we want to be so so uh
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comments close tomorrow tomorrow Monday March 11th I believe around noon uh you
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know a lot of times we don't we don't have an opportunity to take any kind of action we jump on social media and and
30:40
there's a lot of complaining and whining about all this stuff well here's something you can do uh if you care
30:45
about these things if you if you like catching catching salmon and you don't want to see these workers uh go extinct
30:51
and their numbers dip below a line that they won't allow them to bounce back then we can get on this take action and
30:58
um and drop write an email takes 30 seconds um to to sound off on this
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because you can bet you can bet the folks who want to cut all the Hatchery production uh their their stuff's
31:10
already been tried as far as I'm concerned their their Solutions have have been in the works for the last 10 15 years and it's yielded us nothing
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it's why we're in this scenario with the workers not having pre in the first place um but you can bet that they're
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going to be uh very loud about this topic um but there's a lot more of us
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who want to see this done the right way and there are of them but you got to get involved you got to be active you got to get your voice out there so uh all right
31:36
that is it for this topic real quick I want to show you something um if you're new to kind
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of following me here uh I I'm passionate about the outdoors as you can see but I
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also I came from a technology background and it background so I I I like to build
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digital tools that help me actually and all of you who are willing
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to jump on board with this kind of process of how I go about finding the best opportunities and planning fishing
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trips um we we only have so much time you know you know working uh nine to-
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five jobs working odd schedules we only have so much time to to fish and so you
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know my goal with building these digital tools help all of us uh spend less time
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uh preparing Ing and and researching uh to be able to do these things and be effective so I've got a new I've got a
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new feature that right now is just on the Marin are 11 salmon fishing page here um but it's an integrated uh tied
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and Marine forecast feature for uh I'm going to put it on all of my Marine uh
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area pages so I'll have it for Westport I'll have it for all the Puget sown Marine areas uh the ocean marine areas
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all that so uh you can also uh also you should check out if you're at all
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nervous about marine weather safety which which is something we should all be concerned about I've got a very
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comprehensive guide to that topic here that will be linked on every one of these Pages you can always go to the uh
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NWS marine forecast page to verify because this is still kind of I'm kind of testing these features out and the
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automation still working some bugs out but it's it's been pretty solid so um it
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shows you uh an integrated view of the marine forecast you could see this was
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today Sunday March 10th you you know this was in this is the Pug toown Hood
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Canal marine forecast from Noah and then you also have the tides right in a table
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right below so you don't have to go to two different sources to get this information so you have the predicted
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high tide low tide the Delta which is very important because the Delta tells us how much water is moving so you see
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the average feet per hour these are pretty big tide swings right uh almost a 14 foot Delta from the previous low last
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night to the high tide at 6:02 a.m. this morning uh moving an average of 1.8 feet
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per hour that's a that's a screaming current for Puget town uh anything anything above 1.5 is a pretty pretty
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strong current and why it's important is it changes how you think about fishing that day right higher current uh you're
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going to have more bait pinned up against uh steep Ledges uh and fish congregated
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to feed there and tie changes in these scenarios can be really really great fishing versus you get some really soft
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Tides doesn't move a lot of bait around and and you you might think differently about how to approach that that day of
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fishing so um check it out uh give me your feedback if there's a different
34:48
format or something that would make it more readable for you um easier to comprehend um let me know definitely
34:55
take feedback and all this again this is about making all of our Lives easier as we're trying to plan fishing trips um
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and uh and be successful out there on the water so so that's that's one new feature I'm rolling out and then um
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let's see oh I want to talk about Westport so so Westport open yesterday March 9th
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for all the bottom fishing stuff the Linka the Rockfish right so I grabbed
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this screenshot from the Noah forecast uh which I don't have yet on my Marine
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area 2 page um if you're wondering Coastal Waters
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from point Grenville to Cape sh water out 10 KN miles this is basically basically your area that you're looking
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at for Westport bottom fishing um you know we've got some really nasty conditions right now but but you're
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going to see these things change as we get into the middle and
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later part of of next week right so you can already see by Thursday the swell
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gets down to six feet um from you know what it is right now which is you know
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12 to 15 15 feet Seas which is nasty no one wants to be out in that uh so you got all these hazardous weather alerts
36:13
up here you want to avoid all that uh so I I'm I'm eager to see the Friday and the Saturday forecast appear on here um
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because uh these could be great opportunities there could be low well great opportunity to get out cross the
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bar and do some bottom fishing now the other thing you got to look at is the tides though and one thing about
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crossing the bar is you generally don't want to cross the bar during Max E right
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in the middle between between a high and a low tide the middle point of that is often going to be your max e so if
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you're looking at like let's say uh let's say Friday you have a high at 453
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a.m. because we had spring forward right we have sunrise at 7:28 a below 11:34
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a.m. well you can't really if you're trying to get out in the morning before an afternoon Breeze kicks up or you got
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other stuff to do in the afternoon evening it's going to be challenging to get out and avoid the Ed uh so that's
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something consider on these days that let's say and there's a bunch of crab pots out there right so I don't want to
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you don't want to run in the dark and uh you know tangle your motor on the bar because you ran over a commercial crab
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pot that are all littered all over the place so please don't run out in the dark unless you have some way of of
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avoiding that but I'm I'm not I'm not about to do that so you know I'm looking
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at these Tides going okay if I launch at seven First Light by the time I get to
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the bar at 7:15 I could probably navigate really well 7:15 it's two hours into the E that e
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might be the peak of this is probably around 8: a.m. so I'm I'm not quite at
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Peak but I'm kind of close to Peak uh Peak e and uh if you're confused about
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this concept please go read my marine weather safety page about why this is why Peak e is something you want to
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avoid now I've been out over the bar on a on a Max E when the swell is really
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low so let's say we get you know a swell of three feet over 12 seconds I'm
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probably that's that's like probably a full send for me and and I'm going with my boat and and my confidence level for
38:26
for for handling that um everyone's a little different on that so you know you got to you got to figure that out but uh
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yeah so so that's something I'm looking at because I really want to get out again I want to take advantage of these these early spring uh bottom fishing
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opportunities with the greatest abundance of quality Lings on all the rock piles before all the charters come
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in and pick them off so um yeah I'm looking at some of these windows uh Saturday would be better Sunday would be
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would be really good right because uh you would be able to get across the bar right around high tide that would be
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a opportune time if if the weather holds up so uh gonna be watching these
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forecasts really closely and getting excited to see you know if you look at the long-term forecast just in your
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weather app you see sun sun sun sun I think 70 degrees and sunny uh I mean it
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could be if if that also comes with really uh soft marine weather conditions
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light winds like it's game on it is game on for Westport bottom fishing so we'll
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keep an eye on that last thing we're about to wrap up here I don't have any questions and I have something to do
39:37
here in a few minutes so um we'll wrap up here but I did want to bring up the steel head topic a little bit so this is
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on my Callis River fishing page PW bestlife.com you can find it there uh
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this updates every Thursday afternoon and you could see our uh steel head
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escapement numbers are growing steadily now where are we in the run where are we
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in the run so again this graph is out there too uh and you could see we are
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let's see we're about here mid-march right so most of the time these runs are
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peaking in right at the end of March early April and so we're in this kind of like shoulder bump but even that look at
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this this this shoulders around 500 fish in a week we're still kind of down here
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in the middle so we've got some work to do there's there's potentially a lot more steel head coming in uh on this C
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if this run is at all respectable um you can expect that it's going to get a lot better than what it's been and it's been
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pretty good already with as long as you can avoid the smelt uh and those should
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largely be done hopefully um you know there's there's opportunities here to to get it done um on the callets and so
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I'll be taking advantage of that as well hopefully I have success to share with you all there but that's that's all I've got for
40:59
now uh hope to see you all in the water feel free to reach out drop me a comment drop me an email follow me on Instagram
41:05
or Twitter wherever you find to connect with me drop me an email please uh drop that email to Noah um about the the the
41:14
the Hatchery production and and and that's really something you got to jump on now so um stay safe out there uh and
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uh yeah hope to see hope to see you all on the water love it when people come up and say hi and and uh get to know
41:29
different people in the fishing community so hopefully this was helpful to you and if I get more positive
41:35
response I'll keep doing these live streams and keep uh uh answering questions and I and I got to get a better scheduling system so you all know
41:42
uh ahead of time that it's coming but uh yeah we'll uh we we'll see you out there
41:48
and take care
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#Outdoors