End of salmon fishing eventually???

[Special T]

Salmon are a tool by the Feds to controll us. If we infight it is easier to point fingers. Natives, commercial, dams, landowners, just another game of who's on first.

Many salmon spend time outside US territorial waters and since there is little regualtion by Asian/Russian Fisheries they can have a huge effect as well. 

http://www.goldseal.ca/wildsalmon/salmon_migration.asp?pattern=summary

http://www.fws.gov/species/species_accounts/bio_salm.html

[Heartsblood]

I call BS on the habitat bit, I'm sure it plays a small part but nets are probably the other 99.9% of the problem...

Netting is habitat loss. By netting, natural free flowing waterways are changed, lost, (borrowed?) for an entrapment environment. Fish are not in the habitat they thrive in when there are nets. They are in an altered habitat, a lost habitat, a changed even damaged habitat because of netting.

Netting is a factor in the bigger picture scenario that is habitat loss and destruction. Habitat is not the smaller issue. Netting is a part of the habitat issue.

The argument has been - netting vs habitat loss. There is no argument here because netting is just one of many ways, that habitat is adversely affected.

[FC]

Nets, regardless of who's using are a major problem.  Yes, by all means, please take the easy way out and point them at the Tribes if it makes you feel better and sleep better at night.  The decimation is occuring by more ways than one and if you don't care to educate yourself on that fact then sorry, by all means carry on.  Sure native fishermen are an issue but to say we are almost the entire issue is abusrd.

Is this directed at me? FWIW I am against all netting equally, I can't even imagine how incredible our fisheries could be without netting!

Guess I should specify, when talking salmon issues my references to 'habitat' are from the river mouth/delta to the spawning beds.  If you want to include the ocean habitat (changing ocean conditions like temperature and acidity or the over harvest of forage fish and shrimp), then I could put more weight on the habitat issue.  But from what I've seen from visiting the coast in Alaska and parts of Washington, and what I've read about coastal BC; there are enough freshwater systems that if 'habitat' was the issue, then the declines theoretically should be confined to those areas that experienced development.  The latest I've heard is that numbers are down even in rivers and small coastal streams in areas that have had nearly no human impact. 

Agreed, these are my thoughts as well.

I call BS on the habitat bit, I'm sure it plays a small part but nets are probably the other 99.9% of the problem...

Netting is habitat loss. By netting, natural free flowing waterways are changed, lost, (borrowed?) for an entrapment environment. Fish are not in the habitat they thrive in when there are nets. They are in an altered habitat, a lost habitat, a changed even damaged habitat because of netting.

I trimmed this to the points I agree with (most of it), to my knowledge there really is only one group that does this and while I have been primarily vocal about this group they are not the sole or even prime issue (with certain exceptions).

[Wenatcheejay]

It makes me sad. This is a sport I "hung it up on." It was a tradition. I have $1000's in gear and a boat for it but I quit. I feel that participating in the program hurts the runs. Also, not buying the license or spending the funds to support it means no funding and I am no longer an activist in it; that is also hurting the runs; It sucks! 

[FC]

It makes me sad. This is a sport I "hung it up on." It was a tradition. I have $1000's in gear and a boat for it but I quit. I feel that participating in the program hurts the runs. Also, not buying the license or spending the funds to support it means no funding and I am no longer an activist in it; that is also hurting the runs; It sucks! 

Would you like to PM me your address so I can facilitate the disposal of all that unwanted gear and boat?

[singleshot12]

It makes me sad. This is a sport I "hung it up on." It was a tradition. I have $1000's in gear and a boat for it but I quit. I feel that participating in the program hurts the runs. Also, not buying the license or spending the funds to support it means no funding and I am no longer an activist in it; that is also hurting the runs; It sucks! 

  Same with sturgeon now! 

[huntnphool]

Same with sturgeon now! 

 

[Wenatcheejay]

It makes me sad. This is a sport I "hung it up on." It was a tradition. I have $1000's in gear and a boat for it but I quit. I feel that participating in the program hurts the runs. Also, not buying the license or spending the funds to support it means no funding and I am no longer an activist in it; that is also hurting the runs; It sucks! 

Would you like to PM me your address so I can facilitate the disposal of all that unwanted gear and boat?

Haha  Sorry bud, switched to bass. Less combat fishing, but not always as big a fight...

If I decide to give away lures again or some reels I'll PM you. (Seriously) You missed the last give away by a few weeks. 

[Wenatcheejay]

It makes me sad. This is a sport I "hung it up on." It was a tradition. I have $1000's in gear and a boat for it but I quit. I feel that participating in the program hurts the runs. Also, not buying the license or spending the funds to support it means no funding and I am no longer an activist in it; that is also hurting the runs; It sucks! 

  Same with sturgeon now! 

Don't remind me! 

[teal101]

The ignorance of this situation is astounding to me.  The indians are an easy scapegoat for the decline and while they have not been helping the situation by blocking the rivers with nets, they sure as heck were not the problem until there was a problem.

Starting in the mid 1800's us Euro-Americans began settling out here and exploiting the natural resources.  We began doing worse than what the indians now are doing.  Completely blocking rivers with nets to collect fish for canning operations.  We used fish wheels to collect fish, seine nets, gill nets, etc.  There was no quota or limit and in the years of large runs many of the fish rotted on the docks as the canneries could not keep up with the supply.  At the same time we were stripping the river of its fish for the commercial canning market we decimated their habitat. 

Hydro mining destroyed natural spawning streams and littered the gravel bottoms needed by salmon to spawn with sediment.  It not only inhibited the salmon from spawning, it buried redds already there and choked out fry.  Hydro mining also washed untold amounts of toxic chemicals from the soil into the stream. 

Along with the mining industry you have the logging industry.  Loggers cut trees along the bank of spawning streams and rivers.  Removing the trees removed the shade and the water warmed.  Fry lost vital cover needed to survive.  Along with the loss of the trees you have splash dams.  Splash dams dammed the river up with logs behind it until the logging company needed to move the logs down.  They opened that dam and released a torrent of water, logs, and sediment down the river destroying redds and fry as it went down.  The logs then go to the mill which dumps tons of sawdust into the water depleting oxygen and choking out the fry. 

We're not done yet though.  The cattle ranchers then began bringing livestock into the cleared areas.  The livestock eat the remaining water holding plants and compact the ground to the point it can not hold water.  Spring floods rampaged and drought in the summer prevailed drying up many streams to a trickle. 

Then their is the irrigation issue.  Have you seen the pictures of the Yakima during the irrigation heydays?  It is damn near dry.  Not only did the fish lose the water, but the fry and smolt in the river were sucked into the pipes and deposited in the irrigated fields suffocating them.

Then you have hatcheries supposedly supplementing the population when in fact they are genetically retarding it.  Managers use the hatcheries as a mask to a problem.  They boast at excellent hatchery numbers when wild strains are dwindling.  Many of you are probably unaware, but each stream has it's own genetically diverse Salmon population.  Taking fish from the lower Columbia and planting them in the Wenatchee does little good but destroy the native genes.  It has been proven since the introduction of hatcheries that they are not the saving grace they are made out to be.  Yet the fish managers still clog the system with their hatchery slime.  They just freed the Elwha river from it's dam giving the native fish a chance to rebound and they want to put a hatchery on it!  Why?  To feed the people who can not wait for proper native population growth.

Finally we come to the permanent hydro dams.  We all realize what they did, but many have never seen an example of the extent of the damage.  Grand Coulee alone destroyed hundreds of miles of natural Salmon and Steelhead habitat.  See the picture:


The indians lived in harmony the with salmon previously.  They used techniques similar to todays the block rivers and catch fish.  The difference is their ancestors had respect for the fish and didnt fish them to the brink like the current ones do.  Not only that, but at that time there was minimal commercial market involvement from the indians, now it is the driving force.  Combine all this and you can see why the Salmon and Steelhead are destroyed.

[HuntandFish]

Teal101-

The points you make are completely valid and were true causes of fish decline. But we do not do any of these practices (damming is an issue on some rivers... hatchery fish is not really a issue here, and the indians are pushing for the elwa hatchery...) anymore. It is really easy to play out the P.R. rhetoric of its not the indians fault we did it, because they were doing it long before us with no problems.

The reasons you listed were the cause of the problem we have now, but we cannot take it back and the damage has been done. We have to focus on corrective and rehabilitation methods now. It is a case of we did it now the indians have to help us fix it. We have stopped the bad practices that decimated the fish populations, now it is the indians turn, there is simply to many people living in this country now to let the indians have free reign!

The indians used to net for sustenance that is no longer the case, they are netting for profit, and allot of the time sacking fish and leaving them rot, along with many other wasteful practices. And they do this all with impunity because the general public is brainwashed into thinking it is all of our past generations faults for what we did to the salmon/indians and for some reason we need to pay the price by letting the indians do whatever they want. Well unfortunately the indians are not responsible people and are overfishing the limited fish populations we have, and it doesn't matter the reasons we have limited fish, it matters now how we can recover this great species for generations to come.

I get that the indians still want to fish, Great! Let them do it with a pole and license just like every other citizen that enjoys the comforts and freedoms of this great nation. The indians are all grown up now, we have given them a huge apology for what has happened to there ancestors and now its time for them to live like they respect what they have!

Do you disagree?

Thanks,
H&F

[Coastal_native]

Yeah, I disagree with the following... 

Teal101-

But we do not do any of these practices anymore.

We have stopped the bad practices that decimated the fish populations

The indians used to net for sustenance that is no longer the case, they are netting for profit,

Well unfortunately the indians are not responsible people and are overfishing the limited fish populations we have

Thanks,
H&F

[predatorpro]

why do i always here how great the salmon numbers have been the last few years? i hear one person say numbers are way up and then i hear people act like salmon are almost extinct?

[JimmyHoffa]

The Elwha hatcheries are for the tribe.  I think it was something like $16 million from the dam removal project.  They probably could've paid the tribe that money directly to NOT net for X number of years and have a better return on the investment.  As it is now they'll be fishing when the 5 years is up and mixing in hatchery fish.

That map leaves off lots of other rivers that aren't affected by dams, and they have had big declines too.

There is a graph I was looking for that showed the total annual catch by tonnage since the 1950's, and if I remember correctly the total had almost tripled before 2010--it was a NMFS graph if you want to search for it.

[JimmyHoffa]

why do i always here how great the salmon numbers have been the last few years? i hear one person say numbers are way up and then i hear people act like salmon are almost extinct?

Wild salmon, particulary kings and silvers, are low enough in numbers to get ESA designation for certain systems.  (though I thought NMFS was claiming silvers are recovered now--not sure, but still low numbers)
The 'great' salmon numbers tend to be hatchery fish and vary by year, also pink salmon have been making up a lot of the records.