Thursday, April 11, 2013

A nice O.P. hen (minus the net scars)
I'm home for a couple days before I head back out to the coast. It will be my last couple trips on the Queets before the river closes on the 15th. I will fish for a little bit on the Forks rivers before I wrap up the season.
This has been considered a big fish year with a solid run size and I would agree with that. The Forks rivers started the late winter season a little slow but from late feb till now I got some good reports. The Hoh fished pretty good too. There where 3 storms that knocked the rivers out of shape for a total of 9-13 days depending on which river you fish. During that time I checked the Skagit flows and not once did I see the river out of shape. Being a damn controlled river makes it very stable.

I'm sure the Skagit hit it's escapement goals again this year. I think we should demand the fish estimates before the season starts instead of getting the numbers at the end of the season - If anybody gets the numbers when they come in let me know. I'll admit I'm bias but I believe C&R single barbless anglers have a very, very minimal impact on the Wild steelhead. (1-3% of a impact not 10%) If something has to change it should be the things that DO HAVE a impact..... hmmm like the Commercial fishing, not on our sport fishing. Alaska makes sure they have met there escapement goals first and then allows for the nets to harvest a river. We need to spread anglers out instead of everybody having to fish a handful of rivers, keep eye's on the river (there is poaching going on now! living on a river I see and hear it more than you think) Our successful fisheries will help our local business and economy. If we have to I wouldn't mind paying extra like you do on the Columbia Rivers to help support our Pacific NW and our spring fishing. We are hoping that the CCA can help us here. They are watching this issue now.
Ok.... starting to rant, back to the report.

We went to the Everett CCA meeting last tues. Tom Nelson gave a great presentation on salmon and puget sound fishing. I'm more of a river rat but I especially enjoyed his interesting points on ocean fish behavior.
He also gave a good power point slide show that showed the different salmon specie's estimated run size for this year. Bottom line; Last year was a pretty good year and all of the numbers across the board look better than last year not to mention about 3 million pinks coming to our local "S" rivers. One number I particularly liked was the number of Coho coming to the Stillaguamish, I believe 30+K so there will probably be a 2 fish limit.

Even though they are better than last year, 2 runs that concern me are the Stilly chinook and the Skagit Chum. I know that since the "local commercial" fisherman have found a market for the chum roe the once thriving and fun fishery has took a nose dive.

tight lines,

Now booking: Methow trout fishing, summer steelhead, pink salmon fishing and Grande Ronde steelhead.

Mike Dickson
425-330-9506
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