Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[VAGAbond]

In the last 10 days:

26753 steelhead on the Oregon side

28377 steelhead on the Washington side.

http://www.nwp.usace.army.mil/environment/fcounts.asp?fr_cdy=2011&fr_cdm=7&fr_cdd=21&to_cdm=7&to_cdd=30&op=sdaily&subbtn=Get

Watch them go by:  http://www.nwp.usace.army.mil/locations/fishcam_hs_wa.asp

Jeessh!   Wish we had that here.

What was the Thompson run last fall, 1000 fish?

[silver ghost]

why is it that they get so many steelies back? and where is this?

[JAwrey]

Maybe that's why they use spinning reels down there...they can afford to lose a few!!!!     

[StillAqua]

why is it that they get so many steelies back? and where is this?

Columbia River Gorge.

[VAGAbond]

why is it that they get so many steelies back?

The Columbia is a very big river with lots of steelhead friendly tributaries and this is a count at the beginning where they see all the fish...... and they have looked after their runs better than we have and the Yanks have rehabilitated their rivers as necessary instead of sitting back hoping Nature will do the job like we have in this country.

Also note that half of the fish are fin clipped.

[silver ghost]

whoa, that videostream link is awesome!!! I didn't know they were serious about their fisheries management in the US - it makes ours look like a joke! So many fin clipped but there is probably a little more than half wild that returned. It's probably because most of our major rivers in the lower mainland have been dammed up = immediate loss of spawning habitat thanks for sharing

[silver ghost]

wait...I just read they have sturgeon retention on the columbia...is that fishery doing so well that people can keep them?

In any case, i dont see why somene would want to keep a sturgeon, they're bony ol' dinosaurs

[awurban@msn.com]

It is a lot of fish but unfortunately the american laws took on a replacement approach when they were building dams in the western US. For every dam they built they also build a hatchery to replace lost wild fish with hatchery fish. The fish in the Columbia that go to Idaho go over I believe 8 dams. There are still wild fish but their stocks have been seriously harmed. Also hatchery fish don't replace the wild fish that are lost. Up here the fisheries isn't perfect but they take a different approach, if a river has a healthy stock of wild fish they leave it like that, no hatchery and they also put in place catch and release. Most of the best wild steelhead fisheries are in Canada and there's a reason for that, people fighting the building of dams, and people fighting to protect fish habitat and protecting wild fish

[KP]

So awurban.  I need a clarification on your definition of healthy stock.  I firmly believe we have um NO healthy wild stocks in BC that we have easy access to fish for.  Lets take the Upper Pitt River as a prime example.  I have read a gentlemen's diary who fished the UPR in the sixties and he personally recorded looking into pools and seeing groups of over a hundred steelhead holding.  The Pitt is a wild pristine river with very few fish left.  I am glad the wild coho non retention laws came into effect a number of years ago or they too would be gone.  1000 fish on the Thompson, that's a mere fraction of what this mighty river once had.  The Americans are now reaping the rewards of over 100 years of trials and tribulations with their hatchery programs and unless our river managers take action we will never see this kind of recovery.  They need to take action.  Real action.  Not a meager sum of money for habitat restoration on the one tributary of the UPR which was virtually unchanged from the sixties.  They let the Boise complex which in my estimation was the number one spawning and rearing area on the whole system.  No a plug nickel.  Real change will mean real money and i think environmentally interested people in society would be in favor of government or private interests like the Pacific Salmon Foundation using the money people donate to start to make a difference.  The tactics to date are not making a difference and stocks decline or teeter on the verge of colapse.