Salmon Fishing 2021 Updates! (LOST EPISODE)

Hey, what's up everyone out there Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of the addicted fishing podcast It's been probably a couple weeks the last few episodes that we put out we uh I just like fired them all out at the same time three three three uploads at one time Well, we got to catch up somehow. Yeah, just search the content out there hopefully we were talking about like Subseason that was like months before let's talk about spring chinook still tributary spring springers Usually I put like lost episode or something in the title just because And in all reality guys, it's because marlin didn't put them out and i'm an idiot So i'm gonna try to get better. Sorry guys, and and we I think this is just tradition now We just start every podcast with an apology. Yeah It's just like but we don't we don't really necessarily have a podcast sponsor anymore So we don't need to start it with our sponsor. Yeah, but truth be told we've also been busy That's true chasing lots and lots of fishies fishing has been Really fun Really really fun until they closed it. Yeah, you know, when's this podcast coming out? When are people listening to this right now? Hopefully it's not december Hopefully it's not A couple days a few days. Hopefully it's not december a few days If clint gets it edited up and he texts me and tells me I will put it out I promise and if you're listening to this in december blame clint Hopefully you're listening to this in september Go ahead. But yeah guys here on the pacific northwest We've been salmon fishing for the last basically since well cam's been at it since mid july the rest of the Crowds for the most part have been at it pretty much since august 1 Chasing them up the river as they closed kind of down low and now we're up here in our backyard and now they close that Yep, they did. It's a shame. It's really is are they going to reopen it their meet tomorrow, right? Yeah, I don't think it's actually going to go to a meeting. I think it's going to be an emergency opener So hopefully by the time you guys are listening to this We're going to see some openers, but you know, it's been really fun. Not I shouldn't say fun, but it should say Well, that's how they did the emergency closure without holding a compact meeting They just do private compact. Do they ever do freaking emergency openers because I don't feel like they do well, I think they just might do it under the guise of in-season management and just do it good because we because because there's myself over here and then and then And then bill, excuse me bill monroe over on the oregon side You know kind of Pounding on the door like when are we meeting? When are we discussing this? What are some where are some fact sheets? Where's this? Where's that? and we're kind of getting told like well, we might even not just do that we might just do this to Get something going and so, you know, it's a little bit inside baseball on this guys and like I said, hopefully the season's open when you're listening to this podcast, but Man, there's just so many moving parts to like this closure and like, you know, we're seeing this this giant dam count and of course, i'm sure everyone's pounding down their doors, but they're trying to You know pick up all those, you know those snouts and those coated wire tag recoveries that they're getting they're trying to process all those and You know trying to decide if some of these um, some of these traps and some of these lower river Areas actually have the abundance of fish that they should or hopefully more than they should or more than forecasted And that's kind of the key word forecasted Because you know, we caught a lot more of those fish than they planned on us doing. Yeah um, you know and so when we started the season out with You pretty much saying that from the get-go, right that we those were kind of at risk like we needed to be careful with those early returning Stocks, right, right the constraining stock at the bowie 10 fishery was once again Going to be lower river toolies. I mean, we'll just we'll just say toolies right now I mean, there's toolies that do go above bonnet. Oh, but let's just for this for this discussion. Let's just call it Let's just say it's toolies Um, but yeah that was that was coming in with all the pre-season forecasting we knew That upriver brights the ones we really want, you know, the ones that are going to go above bonneville and then above dalles and john day Um, though that run was looking awesome It wasn't on this like borderline of good versus bad like it was the previous year But this year it was looking like yeah, baby open season. Here we go But our constraining stock once again, we're going to be these toolies and if we caught too many of them We'd have to do in season management. Well, we all started bowie 10 august 1 we were told that if we do a Hatchery only situation because it's really the wild there's some runs of wild toolies in the lower columbia That we have to protect and it's all and it's because of noah. It's because of like some big up, you know overreaching not overreaching, excuse me, but overlooking Noah agency saying that you have esa listed toolie stocks in the lower columbia But you also have to plant all these hatchery toolie stocks to mitigate some of the canadian fisheries So they stay off some of our fisheries so they can get down the coast and we can catch them It's a long convoluted thing. But basically we put toolies in the water So like I said, the canadians don't catch them but and all the while there are wild toolies in the water That we need to keep wild and we need to not touch So you can see how convoluted this is already getting Yeah, so bottom line Well, the good thing is is at least they're making an effort to keep it open because they could just say it's closed We can't well they kind of did and and this is the part that we're all kind of miffed at because They said, you know to get through the august season, you know, so because of that hatchery and wild toolie They were they told us if you just can give us, you know, 10 to 14 days And this was back at north of falcon and earlier we go 10 to 14 days And this was back earlier in the season setting process. I'm sorry guys. I'm tired but Give us hatchery only For the first two weeks of the season at buoy 10 That's when most of our true wild toolies are present in the system Get them through because if you're only bonking hatchery fish, you're not bonking wild ones there are some impacts there because you have some handle but it's A fraction small fraction of what it would be if you were bonking them, right? Get us through that and we should be in the clear and we'll be good and We won't have to deal with this again And then everything from tongue point up will run a full season till september 9th And then everything from warrior to bonneville will run 90 days august 1 till october 31st I mean as good of a season as you could pretty much ask for in this day and age of salmon management, right? Well, we gave those 10 days and even during those 10 days where it was hatchery only fishing was freaking phenomenal And it was very very very quickly abundant or quickly apparent that the abundancy of these fish toolies up river brights bonneville pool hatchery fish You know all of the above that there was just a freaking lot of fish in the water and we smashed them And we smashed them from opening day from opening day. Yeah, there was even still some i'm convinced There was still a lot of like summer chinook around and we'll be able to tell that like I said later on when we get Dakota wire tag reports on what we caught but I know there was still summer chinook and spring chinook around Bottom line is there was a lot of fish. So as we went into the buoy 10 season with the kill them all season on august 11th um, you know, we were catching fish and I believe the number somehow rolled up to like something like 17,000 fish since the kill all opener and we were only projected to be at like 11 or something like that So bottom line is we caught just tons and tons and tons of fish Well, there's a reason why we're catching tons and tons and tons of fish and it's because there's tons and tons and tons of fish in the water and so when you have this situation right now where The state says this is what the forecast is and we expect you are going to catch this much out of that that batch of fish that you're catching there's toolies in there and there's wild toolies in there, but We expect you to catch this much and if you stay in that line, the season should run like this As long as the stock composition stay the same, you know, there's not like more toolies and brights more brights and toolies Whatever they guess that was the number and they got the stock composition, right? But they didn't get the volume right and we hammered them. We caught tons of fish So then they slowed our buoy 10 season down. They canceled that early closed it closed it to chinook retention about I guess it'd be 10 days early than what it's supposed to supposed to go till september 6th So then trans so then everybody, you know what like everybody did myself included we fished up rivers, okay Well, I guess buoy 10 is done, but the writing was on the wall We were screaming at the managers even one of the compact meeting. I said look, you know, we got fish to catch There's a lot of fish down here. We're going to be handling them We went up river the same thing occurred It really occurred at the mouth of the callots where a lot of these tag recoveries were coming back toolies And so from september, excuse me from august 27th till september 4th We were smoking them again And they freaked out again because once again, we were catching more than they expected us to catch But here herein lies the problem with this this way of thinking and this way of management I'm going to back you up a little bit. Let's just say that you decided that You put out a forecast and let's say you over predicted. Let's let's flip the coin, right? Let's let's if you over predict the toolie run the ones you have to protect and let's say let's say there's Let's say you're supposed to get a hundred thousand toolies back and we're expecting you to catch five thousand of them But what if you only catch? 2,500 of them And then at the end of the year Or excuse me, so if you only catch 2,500 of them when you were supposed to catch 5,000 of them you would go your full season fishing for these other fish the upper river brights because All of a sudden you're within their expectations based on that forecast It's pretty but then at the end of the season you might realize well You didn't get a hundred thousand toolies. You only got fifty thousand because you only had you only caught half the fish You were thinking you were going to catch But you would fish your full season. So it's like what's basically I believe happening now is we're getting punished Not punished but the state's definitely throwing their hands up and saying hey, you've got to stop this we're catching fish And i'm not necessarily saying that we shouldn't like slow down Or we shouldn't close the season, but we've got to have some kind of mechanism that says look You guys are catching a lot of fish. We get it You know, you guys were expected to catch those 5,000 toolies, but now you've caught 10 Well, is it because you have a hundred thousand fish actually coming back or do you have 200 000 fish coming back? And that's the dynamic we're in so like when the things are going good And we're catching fish We're gonna get shut down But it'd be like a springer run if they up if they over predict it because then we don't see that expected catch and then We'd get extension extension extension And then when it all rolls up at the end, we'd be like, well, damn it. We didn't make our numbers It's freaking ridiculous Meanwhile, the dam count the upriver brights the ones that we want to catch the really the ones that we're targeting are flying through like mcnary dam right now, I think has got like Higher numbers of chinook salmon going over it than they have had in like the last like eight years I think and it could be like of all time And that's mcnary dam and that's the fourth dam up That's like the the ones that you know, the snake river wilds the upper brights the good ones Yeah, and so meanwhile like all the public is seeing these just awesome. Damn counts Awesome fishing. Let's be honest. They're scrolling facebook and it looks like a freaking damn fish market out there I mean i'm seeing just it's pretty nuts out there and it's awesome It's really it's great because like these people that you know that want to participate in these fisheries, you know I mean we saw them out there all labor day weekend and You think about how much money that influxes into the economy too. It's amazing. I mean think about that And but I mean just like I mean, I spent 200 300 bucks a day every time I was out there for sure Yeah, I mean the clients coming through double trips I mean it was going down and you know But though you go out there and you look and it wasn't just us catching everybody Everybody's catching them. Yeah, that's what a guy blamed me today on instagram. He that's what he said He said yeah, you guys are the reason they closed this fishery because you taught everyone how to catch them. Well, the reality is What an idiot well the reality is like there there is some definite there's now there is some you really want I argued And what I said in my response back was I said, dude, look Six seven eight years ago No one was trolling for these fish like we've all learned to catch them better We have now now think about that. So and this is one of my discussions I had with one of the wdfw managers Was that you know, he's telling me that you know times are changing things are changing We're just we are more effective with you know, the 360 shortbow super series And we are but we're also more effective because we're not fishing half the day So if you think about this fishery Eight years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we only fished on an outgoing tide. We rarely trolled there was some small trolling You know trolling the cherry cherry bobbers spinners, but it was nothing like it was We fished the outgoing tide and if it was only for six hours day four hours day, whatever. That's what we did We we based our trips on it. We didn't do if if it was a really bad time We went to the tribs we did other stuff, but you didn't fish dawn till dark And now you can and so the dynamics of the fisheries let's make it are changing we did not There were lots of guys here's the thing It's no different than when the triangle flashers took hold in the springer fishery Yeah, you watch a guy reeling in a fish and he's got that damn flashy little triangle thing hanging in front of it You go. Well, damn he's catching that thing on the triangle It was not whether we got into the fray or that or not that thing We did it for a year mind you without saying crap to anybody But the problem is every time you catch it, we were also learning it just to be fair We are no like long-term 20-year veterans of this crap. Nobody is and I don't care what they say. Nobody is Well, let's drop her on the east side But no at least our at least our area But now in our area when we were when we were figuring this stuff out figuring how effective it out Same thing we would catch one on it and that freaking skateboard would be sitting there flashing it every time you land a fish Of course every time someone's landing a fish everyone's watching it wasn't gonna take that long to figure this stuff out So regardless of regardless of all that the fishery is changing And because the fishery is changing we have to start changing the way we manage the fishery You know what? I mean like these ways that that noah's come down and and these guidelines and and how we structure these fisheries are obviously They're not working Like I said They're counterintuitive on the fact that like I said if we have an under prediction or an over prediction like we talked about earlier And there's got to be something that's that's got to be done And I don't know one thing that's becoming really apparent is some of these river mouths are really becoming truly intensive hot spots Whereas from what I to my understanding like right now Everywhere else in the river was like right in the guidelines where it'd be like the catch would be you know Uh 30 percent this or 70 percent that like the stock composition didn't change the volume changed, but the stock composition They have some of those cold water sanctuaries up the river farther, right? Yeah, but we don't care about those because anything there's no toolies that we care about Do you think that they should implement? Yes in our think they'll have to I think that's going to be what's I mean Right, but I think anybody would argue well, I mean like who knows right? I mean if I had my druthers I would take what we've got in the last three years on the tag recoveries from the locations that we've got them And we got to say look guys you can fish here and we can all decide collectively as a You know as we all at north of falcon or we can all decide collectively, you know on the columbia river. Um, Not not the compact meetings, but um, you know, just kind of the processes that we go through to set the seasons Yeah, and they can just come out and say look and they they already kind of do this they give you like three or four options and it says If we do this, this is what's going to happen And these are your dates that you can get and this is what we're modeling based on our forecast now Obviously, we know what happens with forecasts i.e this year But that's what they give you and what they'll do is and they'll they'll drum up another season where they'll take those Hot spots out of it and say this is the season you'll be able to get with that And pick which one you want And then they'll collectively kind of take the input from the public and kind of decide what they want so But that hasn't really been on the table we've gotten you know, we've they Three years ago a tuli or constraining stock hot spot was the tongue point to the west puget island and they Shut that down for a couple years or they at least when they shut buoy 10 down They made people move further up the river. And so that was kind of one of those steps. Um, But it's kind of like my argument with like some of the north coast steelhead stuff You can't just like blanket this you need to freaking start managing it And I think one of the tools in their tool chest will be To look at these tuli hot spots for the next time that the tuli stock is our constraining stock and Figure it out around figure figure out how we're going to construct a fishery around that. Yeah It needs to happen obviously because what we're doing right now is not working and and their words to me Is well the fishery is changing, you know, well Time to change what we're doing Um going forward, you know right now depending as we sit today They're trying to drum up the numbers as far as if we have any indications or any evidence of a tuli run being Larger than predicted Unfortunately, they have like dates that say like september Fifth is like 50 percent Wild tuli arrival to these tributaries But september 15th is 80 percent. Well, october 1st is 90 percent. So as you move further into the season You know as far as getting us back on the main stem columbia As those tuli's move out of the river Well, obviously you have less chance of catching them theoretically if there was a date that they knew there was no tuli's in the columbia You could go fishing that date every time because you're never going to kill another one, right? But they have they're going to have to figure out where all this tuli kill Ended up with you know, because we fish till labor day here above warrior What the actual run they think is actually going to come in and then decide okay Well, if it's that 80 percent arrival if they put us in then or they put 90 around how many more? Are we going to catch if they open us back into the lower columbia? And I know right now there's a few people that are like feverishly looking at some other ideas. We're like, okay Well, let's just put them in above i5. I'll put them above rooster rock And get them away from any chance of handling tuli's and we can go in theoretically tomorrow And I know they're feverishly looking at tag recoveries and feverishly looking at some of these some of these creel counts and creel checks um, so I don't think it's a matter of these guys are just Sitting on their ass playing golf. You know what I mean? I think they are actively trying to figure out What to do because they got to stay within the guideline noah guidelines and how much we can impact these fish But I think let's be honest There's a bunch of wild fish people out there that watch them like hawks waiting for them to make some sort of mistake Oh, that's a fact. Yeah. Oh, no. No without a doubt there's people that do not have the Interests of the fish or us in mind by any stretch of the imagination and they're the silent super silent minority But they definitely turn the screws with the state. Um, unfortunately because sportsmen are a bunch of idiots Yep, you are an idiot i'm an idiot we're all idiots because If we all just figured out how to do it collectively we could do probably whatever we wanted But we don't we all just fight and blame other people and whatever Blame gillnets blame blame gillnets even though they stayed in zones four and five and I had a client one time say he didn't want to go fishing because the gillnets were in the night before and I said well They're in only upper river where we were fishing But you get what i'm saying, but you're right there is a lot of interest so they have to stay within those guidelines so they're They're feverishly, you know, we invited them all into our live feeds tonight and and you know Unfortunately got respectfully declined, you know, they're busy. They got lives too, you know Blah blah blah, but I think at some point in time i'd love to get them in for some of these podcasts and get to the nitty-gritty because and I'm not going to speak for them But they you know I've heard some stories of what they're doing driving some of these snouts down to the labs to try to pull them You know pulling tags through the nights getting reads on them looking up and you know, just trying to figure out exactly You know, let you know trying to figure out as the dust is settling here. What's what's going on? Um, and I don't think they'd be doing that if they didn't necessarily want us back in the water Yeah, so I do give them a little bit of credit in that respect but obviously, um Like I said what we're doing needs to change so next april And next march and next may when these things start coming around again, and we'll start talking about our fisheries. Don't forget this and Uh, yeah get involved where you can. Yeah You'll see announcements. You'll see stuff out there and What's that Said i'd like to just go fishing, please. Yeah. Well, we're in the thick of it right now so that's all everybody wants but next march april may no one's gonna be thinking about this when we're doing north of falcon and we're seeing the options and Yeah, it's a tough. It's a tough tough road. Yeah so if you are one of our listeners out there that is not from the pacific northwest you can understand the Agony we're going through right now. It's pure agony I i'm telling you like this discussion scratched just the surface like I mean, I would love to get these guys in to you know to have it but I just just just knowing from where from From my past life and kind of what's going on. Like it's it's actually very i'm i'm very very very much dumbing this down um To actually portray it. I guess that makes sense because it's there's a lot to it salmon management I'm sure I'm sure there's a lot Well, we got to go record a live feed now folks. So we appreciate you guys say this all again, don't I? We appreciate you guys listening to our podcast tonight It was a little bit more about the fisheries out here in the northwest But don't forget if you guys are liking our podcast you want to hear more of these make sure you guys hit the thumbs up Drop some comments leave some reviews And hopefully we'll record these more regularly, but it's getting into wintertime. So i'm assuming we're gonna be Yeah, yeah, it's it's definitely well and they also shut down our local area so we can't really go fishing now Womp womp. All right, everyone Thanks so much. We'll see you