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What happend to the steelhead in Washington?

8K views 93 replies 40 participants last post by  gt 
#1 ·
Okay, fellas, perhaps I'm a bit lazy in not wanting to do the research myself, but I thought I pose a question that I feel is silly, but I truly don't know the answer.

What happened to the steelhead populations in Washington?

Our rivers are raging due to the wet weather and most are toast for a while, so I find myself either a lot at the computer visiting steelhead forums and sites or re-reading books like "A Passion for Steelhead". It seems like not so long ago, Washington rivers were loaded with big, bright, solid, hard-fighting steelhead. The book is loaded with awesome pics of these gorgeous fish. But a good portion of the book is depressing, with an almost, "you should have been there, it was awesome" theme. The book wasn't written by some guy who could be my great great grandfather, it was written by a guy my age!

Here in Northern California, we can attribute the decline to logging (coastal rivers), mining (inland rivers) or damming (both). Some is simply mis-management of the water resources... the tug for water between farmers and So Cal and environmentalists, especially during drought periods. Perhaps a bit of greed and overfishing, too. Of course, there are other factors undoubtedly, but the purpose is not to start a debate, simply to understand, in general, what happened to the steelhead in your rivers.

You have so many rivers and so much water! I look at a map and see long stretches of rivers before being dammed, what appears to be plenty of habitat left. I never hear talk of rivers being "silted in" from logging but I know that must be an issue.

I look at rivers on the map like the Sauk, Skagit, Snohomish, Skykomish, Snoqualamine, which seem to flow for miles before being dammed. I don't see that all are. So was it the dams? Was there not enough habitat left? Was it logging? And I never hear anything written about the fishing in rivers like the Green or Cedar just to the south?

I'm self-admittingly uneducated on this subject. Anyone care to give me the unabridged history lesson?
 
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#5 ·
yur right, should have been swingin' flies for steelhead in the 60s-70s-80s, the pictures don't lie. good news is you can still find wild steelhead at your local fish market or select restaurants courtesy of our conservation minded coastal tribes who believe in killing the golden goose.
 
#10 ·
I blame Obama :thumb:.

Not really, I vote dams. Below ever dam you can find massive bottem feeders which are sitting there eating everything that get chopped up in food sized chunks. In all actuality its a combo of everything listed above.
 
#20 ·
Who do you think is buying the wild fish sold at places like Pike Place Market? White Man, Red Man, it is way to easy to point fingers at one another when in reality we are all to blame.
 
#14 ·
Have the runs in the Skykomish improved at all? If I recall correctly, which indeed I may not. Several years ago Chris and I were fishing the Sky having taken the boat out at Lewis St . We had a conversation with , perhaps it was even Curt, a biologist talking about the upcoming early closure. He said at the time that there was a grant or tribal money that was going to fund a study of the Skykomish native steelhead run. The story went something along the lines of the study is going to last 8 or 10 years and even if the fish population improved to the point the fish were overflowing into the Monroe prison they would not be re-opening the river late season until the completion of the study. Did that come true? Was that true? I never heard.
 
#15 ·
Why doesn't anyone think that pollutants have as big or bigger impact as the other popular punching bags listed here? I have no proof but it seems that tons of lead + even more tons of mono line + new fancy fishing gear every year + giant jet boats + relativity small river = lots of chemicals dumped into an eco system over several decades has got to add up eventually.

Every boat launch I go to on every river has at least some trash that I pick up without exception. Granted some more than others but it is a really bad problem, if the fish will take an artificial fly I'm sure they will eat some of this junk freely floating down the river as well.

Plus I have been fishing for two years now and have NEVER had my license checked or even seen a game warden which just doesn't make sense, I mean they are out there somewhere right? This just seems like enforcement is very light if this is the case. In Texas when we would go dove hunting we would be checked at least 50% of the time.

Any who seems like there is a garbage problem but I could be wrong.
 
#16 ·
Why doesn't anyone think that pollutants have as big or bigger impact as the other popular punching bags listed here? I have no proof but it seems that tons of lead + even more tons of mono line + new fancy fishing gear every year + giant jet boats + relativity small river = lots of chemicals dumped into an eco system over several decades has got to add up eventually.

Any who seems like there is a garbage problem but I could be wrong.
there is a garbage problem throughout the state and country. i think the non-litterers are a tiny minority with the amount i see everywhere along not only the roads, but trails and rivers. as for the garbage being the pollution harming fish, it is possible but there are far worse pollutants being dumped all over and draining into puget sound (marine survival being the main problem right now for puget sound steelhead).

with the amount of chemicals pouring into puget sound from our yards, farms, and pavement and the many new chemicals coming out all the time... it wouldn't surprise me if this toxic stew is having impacts far beyond what we now know. you can only stretch a rubber band so far before it breaks. our fish populations are possibly at that breaking point after centuries of intensively destroying everything wild fish rely on.
 
#17 ·
i dont think pollutants are effecting the rivers as much in the WA rivers i have fished. a little trash isnt gonna kill the run, think of the volume of water that flushes through these systems...

puget sound though is a different story, and pollutants def play a big roll in that ecosystem.
 
#18 ·
Just read an article in Nothwest spotsmans that talked about steelhead smolts making it through Puget Sound and out to open ocean. They tagged smolts were put in two rivers. The Green and the skagit. Both rivers had the same succuess rate. It's been awhile since I read the article but I think the numbers were something like 40 percent of wild fish make it to the ocean and 15 percent of hatchery fish. The follow up article is coming in the next issue that might give some reasoning to why the percentage of fish reaching open ocean is so small. I found it interesting that the issue may not be the rivers at all, but something greater like Puget Sound or the ocean. Remeber I am only talking about fish that make it to open ocean. I really have no idea if Puget sound has resident steelhead like the resident coho. Interesting article anyway.
 
#19 ·
I remember back about 40 years ago when there was lots of fish in the river. You would see them in schools. Now you only see a few of them in the rivers.

I was fishing the S/F of the Sauk at Monte Cristo Lake area. I was throwing flies and my father in law was using shrimp. There was a log under the water in the middle of the stream. My father in law would throw his baited shrimp out and it would drift along side the log. The fish would come out and suck the shrimp off the hook. Frustrating to say the least. But that was when there was fish in the river. The last time I ever hit that area there wasn't even any smolts around. There was at least 20 fish in that school.
 
#21 ·
I agree with pretty much all of it, what does peak my intrest is that the year before last the Columbia and tribs had the biggest run of returning fish in hundreds of years. This year whole systems are closed. Nothing enviromentaly has really changed from then to now. Only 2 years. The experts credited "good ocean conditions" for the record number of fish coming back. So, is the main reason for good or poor returns ocean conditions, and has it always been this way? Im not saying that we haven't destroyed habitat and all that, anyone who thinks dams, logging, and building dont affect habitat is on planet 10. I'm just wondering if we took the last 1000 years and looked and the stats if the ocean conditions were on a cycle and that we will eventually see great returns again.
 
#22 ·
I was talking to one of the major things that's wrong the other day at my office. A friend who fishes (gear) a lot is, like our leaders, of the opinion that as long as there are hatcheries (and he can catch and eat his fish), the fisheries are in fine shape. That's a prevailing attitude, guys, and it is the main reason we have the damage from logging, roads, farms, development, over fishing, and you name it.
 
#23 ·
Why has this forum become such a "Save the whales, Save the trees, The ozone is failing us, It' their fault, It's my fault, The world is caving in", forum?

Obama, Bush, Whites, Reds!

Dams, Logging, Chemicals, Pressure, Global Warming, Garbage, Fishing technique!

I mean this is depressing as hell! Bitch, Whine, Complain, Blame!

Things change, people change, the earth changes! People change things on the earth....

There are many things that have happened and many things that will happen. Shit is going to change! Some for the better, some for the worse! Many of the those changes are out of our (Mans) control. Kind of like the earth quakes, volcano's, hurricanes, etc. Our world will continue to evolve (this includes, plants animals and people). I think it's our job to do our best with the cards we're dealt!

But this forum.. in the short time I have been reading, listening and contributing has become a bitch, poor us, poor world fest! Maybe we should do less talking and more doing!

For Example: next time you see garbage on the river bank... Pick it up! Next time you see someone dumping something into our lakes, rivers, ocean... report it! If someone breaks the law... report them! If someone does something stupid... beat their ass! This world, humanity, has become to tolerant and passive! To much talk and not enough walk! When it's time to vote, make your vote count!

Get involved! and make shit happen!
 
#33 ·
To much talk and not enough walk! When it's time to vote, make your vote count!
My vote does count...unfortunately it only counts once.

I would like to report some missing steelhead. Where and to whom, exactly, would I do that? Will we get some detectives on the case? Maybe some US Marshalls or FBI dudes? Nothing ever happens until the badges start being flashed.

What? No badges!

So I'm thinking...next time I re-up for my fishing license there is really no need to get the steelhead endorsement. The only valid steelhead fishing I've done in the past two years is in E. WA. And the river is full of small mouth bass, trout, whitefish, suckers, etc. Steelhead are mainly a bycatch...in fact I caught more bass than steelhead...so I guess I was bass fishing. And if by some measure of bureaucratic blunder my home river does open up I guess I'll get an endorsement then.
 
#24 ·
There are two other factors not mentioned, as far as I can see. Number one, there are ebbs and flows in genetic species. We are in the ebb times;proven fact. The second is the atypically large populations of Cormorants and Merganser Ducks that feed on smolts and other small fish. At the present time the large populations are not managed well enough to keep them from just palin overeating on the steelhead and salmon smolts on their way out to the ocean. It's survival of the fittest and currently the birds are winning the battle. There are huge populations of these birds on Puget Sound and especially the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
 
#28 ·
I agree cormorants are a huge problem for Puget Sound steelhead and salmon smolts. Over the last twenty years the cormorant population has exploded and continues to go unchecked. Obviously there are several other important factors effecting the fish, many of which are far more detrimental to the Puget Sound steelhead and salmon populations such as pollution and over fishing but the whole cormorant situation is definately taking a bigger toll on the remaining fish than most people realize.
 
#30 ·
In 1877 the first hatchery was established in the Columbia Basin, on the Clackamas River, to improve spring chinook runs that had been hindered by... hmmm.... well, either there was a natural, cyclical reduction in returns around then that people happened to notice, or returns had been reduced by human impact, and people noticed. I wonder which is more plausible...

Until the early 1900’s, it was legal to harvest fish using any method, and it was legal to build dams with the sole purpose of blowing up the dam to float logs downstream. So, early commercial fishing and early logging practices just happened to coincide with a natural fish run reduction, or early commercial fishing and early logging practices contributed to the reduction. I wonder which is more plausible...

In the 1940’s Grand Coulee Dam came online, blocking more than 1,000 miles of spawning grounds in the Columbia Basin. Antecedent and subsequent dams throughout the state have blocked thousands more miles, probably tens of thousands, but I haven’t added it up. Mitigation attempts have not replaced these runs. Or maybe the dams just happened to coincide with a natural reduction in fish runs. I wonder which is more plausible...

In 1980 or so, the population of Washington surpassed 4,000,000. In 2008, WA population surpassed 6,000,000. Predators such as sea lions, terns, and pikeminnows have been aided by the impacts of these millions of humans, specifically through damming, diking, and dredging. While we do various things to mitigate damage to steelhead and salmon runs, at the same time we do things that increase predation on steelhead and salmon runs. If 10% of Washington’s population in 1970 (about 3.5 million) harvested a single salmon or steelhead, that would have been 350,000 fish. If the same percentage wanted to harvest a single salmon or steelhead in 2010, that would have been about 700,000 fish. So either the state's population increase just happens to correlate to anadromous run decreases, or it contributes to the decrease. I wonder which is more plausible...

The 1974 Boldt decision and many, many, many others decisions were (and continue to be) based on political and legal reasoning, not biologically or scientifically sound reasoning. So, either political and legal decisions happen to coincide with natural downturns in fish runs, or they create downturns. I wonder which is more plausible...

It's worth noting that the last decade has seen some impressive anadromous returns to the Columbia Basin in specific years, and various other Oregon and Washington watersheds have seen impressive returns in specific years. There's hope - there's always hope, that's why I fished today - and there's more hope if more fishermen help however they can.
 
#31 ·
Ihv2fsh,

Several things have happened to steelhead in WA. And it's not the same things in the same proportions throughout their range in this state. There are five separate steelhead eco-regions in WA when you think of how the watersheds work and the factors affecting steelhead productivity and survival. The regions are: Puget Sound, N. Coastal, S. Coastal, lower Columbia River, and the Columbia River upstream of Bonneville Dam (the lowermost dam on the mainstem Columbia).

Steelhead runsizes are presently averaging between 5 and 10% of their estimated levels in the 1850-1895 time period, with some populations even lower. Nearly all populations are adversely affected by logging, roads, and urban and rural development across all the regions. Puget Sound populations are additionally significantly affected by dike and levee systems, dams on about 8 rivers, and very likely over-fishing on some Hood Canal rivers. Occasional water pollution of rivers is likely, and it's equally likely that the over-all effect in minor at most. These factors have collectively reduced stream productivity, capacity, and population diversity. Managing wild and hatchery steelhead in aggregate negatively affected wild runs until the mid-70s, but over-harvest is not been a proximate cause of the current status of almost all the individual runs. Puget Sound steelhead populations appear to be affected by low marine survival, significantly lower than coastal steelhead and even lower than Collumbia River populations, which is a reversal of what we know of historic survival trends. Presently, Puget Sound steelhead smolts, which average around 8 fish per pound and surviving at less than one percent to the returning adult stage. Contrast that with the small pink salmon which smolts and goes to the ocean at the tiny size of about 1200 smolts per pound, and they are currently surviving to the adult stage at three to five percent. In a world where we understand size directly correlates with survival, something has gone totally lop-sided here.

Coastal rivers are affected mainly by the first three factors described above. The main difference between the N. and S. coastal rivers is that the N. coast rivers have their headwaters in a national park and thereby the habitat is more protected than that of the S. coast rivers. S. coast rivers were the last to receive any wild steelhead protection, so they might still be affected by over-harvest. Same with lower Columbia River tributary steelhead, with some more dams thrown into the adverse effects list mix.

Steelhead populations upstream of Bonneville Dam are affected sorta' roughly in proportion to the number of dams they have to cross - first going downstream as smolts and again going upstream as adults. These populations also have the greatest amount of hatchery steelhead genetic introgression, making the plight of wild steelhead in this region just a bit more difficult.

While the 4 Hs - hatcheries, harvest, hydro, and habitat are frequently listed as the cause of decline of steelhead and salmon, the present effects of each varies significantly from population to population. Over-harvest is presently the least of the problems for wild steelhead in WA. Harvest by non-treaty commercial and recreational fisheries is strictly controlled and hasn't posed a significant threat in years. And while treaty fisheries typically harvest more wild steelhead than non-treaty fisheries, they are not a limiting factor to steelhead habitat productivity or capacity, but may affect diversity to a measurable degree. Many fishermen attribute the poor status of wild steelhead to treaty Indian fishing, but you won't find one single biologist who is familiar with the data and the situation of these fisheries who agrees with that. If you do, I'll buy you the drink of your choice.

Returning once more to Puget Sound steelhead, the loss of fish during the early marine life history phase must be due to pollution, disease, or predation, or some combination of these. If there is another factor, we haven't a clue what it is. As some posts have noted, a number of predator species have increased in abundance. Couple that with a reduction in species like eel grass and kelp that are associated with the production of some food species, as well as providing cover for juvenile fish, and it's possible that a significant reduction in key forage has occurred coinciding with increased predation due to diminished cover. This is an untested hypothesis on my part, but one must begin somewhere if there is going to be an answer to what has happened.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.
 
#34 ·
Evan,

It's possible that the pink salmon abundance has contributed to a decline in PS steelhead, but I doubt it. The two species do overlap some in their ocean migrations, but the general shape of the migration circles differs enough that I'm skeptical of pinks being the culprit. I think pinks contribute more in marine derived nutrients to the freshwater environment than any adverse marine effect they may cause, but that is just my hunch, supported by nothing more than the general differences in the two species' marine migrations.

Sg
 
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