In one of the more intellectually honest pieces you’ll read this year about steelhead on the Olympic Peninsula, Dylan Tomine lays the hammer down on OP/Washington state steelhead managers in particular, and a host of others – including some fishers.
Read the full piece at the link above if you have any semblance of interest in fishing the OP some day (and as a fly fisher, you probably damn well should); here’s just a teaser (emphasis mine)…
…In reaction to the dismal coast-wide run predictions, the WDFW presented four management options for the upcoming season, including: 1) Early Closure, which would effectively allow fishing on the early-timed wild run, which is the most critically depressed component of the run. 2) Quillayute Only, which would push all fishing effort to a single watershed based on the high return forecast for the Sol Duc. 3) Gear Restrictions, which would limit bait and fishing from a boat in “select waters.” 4) Coast-wide Closure of all winter steelhead fishing on the Washington coast.
Should fisheries managers need to close rivers or restrict angling methods to protect the last few fish and prevent extinction, I think most anglers can get behind that. Support it even. Nobody wants to be the one who shoots the last buffalo. I will mourn for the loss of my personal time on the water, for the local guides’ ability to earn their livings, and even more so, if the tribes curtail their fisheries in kind, the loss of cultural practices and thousands of years of heritage.
But closures, restrictions and new regulations should not be confused with “managing” wild steelhead populations. These are short-term Band-Aids, the proverbial rearranging of deck chairs on a rapidly sinking ship, tuning up the fiddle as flames engulf Rome—choose your own cliché—in the face of something much bigger…
Like many who are deeply entrenched in the OP steelhead world, he’s (overwhelmingly correctly it would appear from the data that’s available) willing to throw almost all of his rhetoric at hatcheries, while tip-toeing around the other huge elephant in the room – tribal harvest.
DT is right; the current approach isn’t working, hasn’t worked in years, and by return results qualifies as a dismal failure. By all means, shutter the hatcheries; but unless you’re willing to take on the Boldt Decision and finish habitat restoration on the OP, it simply isn’t going to solve the problems at hand.
