The coho that returned to the Campbell Quinsam system this fall where of nice size. My friend told me about a couple of wild ones in the 18-20 lbs range. I had a fair amount of fish 10-14 lbs.
Monday of last week I released a steelhead 20 lbs. or better. There had been reports of a few fish in the 5-7 lbs. range. I got two the next day about that size and lost one today, small also.
Lots of the coho forage fish have disappeared from the ocean in the last couple of yrs. along with a lot of the plankton.
The pinks that returned to this system where a lot smaller than the previous years.The predicted run size was about a third of what the where expecting. The chinook return was poor also with the hatchery getting barely enough fish for their egg take. Last yr. they didn't get their egg expectation for chinook
The hatchery is only putting out 500,000 cohos smolts this coming yr. due to the dramatic increase in the price of feed for the fish over the last few yrs. Less biomass as sardines, pilchards,herring, anchovies? More demand from the plague of fish farms?
A lot of the sea mammals are in trouble too with whales, seals,and die off of birds that are unprecedented.
Quite a few web sites are pointing their finger at the uncontrollable discharge of radiation into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima Daiichi the nuclear plant that was destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami in March 11/2011. They say this disaster is poisoning the whole Pacific ocean.
This radiation is only going to bio-accumulate in the food chain and we are at the top of this chain. What this is going to do to us only time will tell.
There is a court case going right now with Dan Durnford. His web page is The Nuclear Proctologist.org or google it. He has some very interesting pictures and research done over the last yr. I think you will find it shocking.
Tights lines