Even Year Snohomish Pinks

[stillyfisher]

I hope somebody can tell me I am wrong here, but are Snohomish even year pinks no more? I haven't heard anything about them really since they opened them up for a season 10 years ago... I found a site on WDFW that seems to suggest they are extinct: https://fortress.wa.gov/dfw/score/score ... ockId=4465" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I would like to think I am looking at this wrong. The odd year pink summary on the same site has a fish count for 2012 included that has an escapement of zero. If this is true, how sad... and yet a lesson in how fragile fish runs are year to year... It also is convincing to me that the claim by fisheries managers that habitat is the biggest threat to fish is bogus. Odd year fish are at record high levels while the even year fish disapear. Same species, same habitat, so... what happened to these fish? The only thing that changed was harvest was introduced on them at a time it would appear that ocean conditions weren't good, maybe?

I am guessing a lot here... does anybody have any real answers?

[Bodofish]

I don't think there was ever a "run" so to speak. If 16 years of buying fish on PS cemented one thing, it's the socks and pinks mirrored each other. There's always that odd few that come through on off years but the number are very small. Just to get it out, Baker Lake doesn't count. I'm not really sure how they started every year but I'm going to speculate it has something to do with the hatchery.

[BARCHASER10]

This is the fishchecker reports for 2012. Click on Central Region and the fishchecker reports for Everett will come up. I checked all the Everett reports from early August to end of October 2012 and there were zero Pinks taken. I have to think if there were even year Pinks in the Sno system somebody launching at Everett would have got a few but there were none.

http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/creel/puget/2012/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[stillyfisher]

I don't think there was ever a "run" so to speak. If 16 years of buying fish on PS cemented one thing, it's the socks and pinks mirrored each other. There's always that odd few that come through on off years but the number are very small. Just to get it out, Baker Lake doesn't count. I'm not really sure how they started every year but I'm going to speculate it has something to do with the hatchery.

Bodo, if you look at the link in my first post you will see that for 20+ years a small but consistant run was documented, then an exponential explosion and crash of the stock between 2002 and 2010. In 2004 there was a commercial and sport season on these fish.

[SkyRiverMan]

Stilly - the even year run of pinks on the sky is very small (a couple hundred? a thousand maybe?) at best. occasionally someone will catch one in an even year, but I would certainly not target them unless you have nothing but time on your hands and don;t mind catching something different than a pink....
It'd be early for pinks on the sky right now anyway....
Come end of September you can float or walk down long stretches of the sky and occasionally find one that's spawned out - unlike odd years where there are so many that everyone in the valley is waiting for the rain to wash away the decay.

[stillyfisher]

So guys who have responded... look at the link that I posted on the top post... I am well aware of what the even year fish are... I have seen them, caught them, seen them dead, etc... My question is this - the state counts and trys to come up with an escapement for every year. Pink salmon all run on the same life cycle from a given generation. That means that they all come from the same years spawners. That means if none return when they should have, there will be no future generation of fish. The state has a graph of the population of even year pinks in the Snohomish from 1980 to 2010. There was great excitement in 2002 and 2004 over the explosion of this fish population. People were thinking that this run was going to become a substantial and viable fishery. It was opened for fishing in 2004. Now nobody is talking about them, and the state counts seem to indicate they are gone. I was looking to see if any WA lakers knew anything about their current status.

[Bodofish]

I guess I'm guilty as the state for thinking it's only a run if it's commercially viable. I guess it goes to show old habits die hard.
Regardless, I'm going to believe you there's a run but I can say I've never caught one in the river. We seem to catch the stray when fishing Possession. If there's less than pinks being counted than Coho is it really a run? Hahaha just pok'in fun. They'll be on the WFC radar before long. It's already been said that the abundance of pinks has hurt the Chum recovery on the Skagit. They hit the river and eat everything in sight.

[stillyfisher]

Bodo, I bet there are people pushing even as we speak to catch more pinks in an effort to bolster other runs... kill more fish to get more fish...???? Best way to get more chums in the river seems obvious - stop killing 60% of the run and let them spawn.

[returnofthefish]

Thanks for posting. Just learned something new. It is odd that they disappeared.

[Bodofish]

Bodo, I bet there are people pushing even as we speak to catch more pinks in an effort to bolster other runs... kill more fish to get more fish...???? Best way to get more chums in the river seems obvious - stop killing 60% of the run and let them spawn.

Another good thing would be to fix the river infrastructure. When the river floods all the little bitty guys get washed out into the fields. Not much swimming out to sea from a bean field.
Still lots of things could be done with out coming to the hatcheries but after all the grant was to given to prove hatcheries are bad for the river systems.

[stillyfisher]

The diking of our rivers was a really bad thing for fish. Much of the Snohomish river from Everett to nearly snohomish was all tidal estuary at one time, flooding over on high tids similar to Samish bay. This is a bit off the forum topic, but I find it amusing when peope build their houses in the cute little river valley next to a diked river, and then when it floods, they wring their hands and complain about being victims. Rivers want to wander around the valley, and move, and that is why the river valley was formed in the first place. When there are no dikes and high water comes, the rivers simply spread out, instead of becoming deep, muddy, and bottom scouring trenches.

[Bodofish]

Oh I totally agree and it's really funnier than spit when people build and live in the flood plain. I used to live just off the Nooksack and there are still quite a few houses, abandoned and getting wet every year... and the ones that got built on stilts, sorry not so good either..... Some great choices have been made with not much forethought, all in the name of dollars, which all of us keep paying by the way.
Unfortunately dikes are another "The cows already got out story.". I don't think there's much anyone can do to change them. In most areas, too many houses and tax dollars at stake. And then there's the industrialization of our bottom land. It used to be lush farm land and now it's all business parks and sub-developments. When it was farms, the farmer welcomed the yearly flood and all the free fertilizer that came with it. Now it's all diked to protect industry and cookie cutter homes. It was a cheap place to build and sell, now it's an expensive place to protect from mother nature. When our little smolt buddies head over the dike, they have a really hard time going back, it's tough to swim when the water turns to dirt. Have a good flood and it washes the rearing grounds right over into the fields..... End of the chum story. Just another story where grabbing a couple hundred chums and starting them out in a hatchery could get the ball rolling in a hurry. Need I mention it was working like a treat on the Green until they started netting them again.... Again, not the hatchery that's the problem, the management of the fishery.
Back to science once again. Some of the fish hang for a while in the fresh, eating getting a little size so they can compete and then there's the Pinks. They go on sheer numbers. They hatch and haul it right out to sea, billions of them, get out and get to the food! It seems to be a winning plan.

[Matt]

The even year fish are still around. They tend to fluctuate from year to year. That one season we had a really high return you would notice that the preceding or following odd year return was likely lower than usual. Because pink salmon are an obligatory 2 year fish (they come back as 2 year olds) supporting an annual run in Puget Sound doesn't seem to hold up. There is a crossover point in their lifehistory that seems to favor one size class of fish over the other, then when that stock (in our case the odd year fish) takes a foothold the other (even year) can't compete and dies off.

[Gringo Pescador]

I might be way off base but another thing to look at as far as recording pink counts on even years is the regs for the Snohomish and Skykomish state specifically

SALMON Sept. 1-Dec. 31 Min. size 12". Daily limit 3 COHO only.

so if they are counting via catch cards they aren't going to see any tagged if you are not allowed to keep em anyway.

We saw a good school of pinks in the lower Duwi while fishing for Coho 2 years ago.
Looking at the regs for the Duwi/Green

SALMON Sept. 1-Dec. 31 Min. size 12". Daily limit 6. Up to 3 adults may be retained. Release CHINOOK.

so you can keep pinks along with your coho, so maybe there are documented counts for that system?

[Bodofish]

The even year fish are still around. They tend to fluctuate from year to year. That one season we had a really high return you would notice that the preceding or following odd year return was likely lower than usual. Because pink salmon are an obligatory 2 year fish (they come back as 2 year olds) supporting an annual run in Puget Sound doesn't seem to hold up. There is a crossover point in their lifehistory that seems to favor one size class of fish over the other, then when that stock (in our case the odd year fish) takes a foothold the other (even year) can't compete and dies off.

Good to hear from the truely qualified person to weigh in on any of these subjects. BTW! Nice job on the Kings as usual! I was thinking about ya when I made the turn heading to Camano. I know, I'm a jerk, i should have invited you out for crabs and cool ones. I'll be ready for some drifting or sleding soon. I have lots of days off.

[Matt]

so if they are counting via catch cards they aren't going to see any tagged if you are not allowed to keep em anyway.

The escapement estimates are primarily based on redd/carcass survey numbers.

[stillyfisher]

As a follow-up to this thread, 1 pink was counted so far this year at sunset falls on August 13th.

[beachbum97]

If you look at the saltwater creel reports, you cans see that there's been a few caught. Mostly up north, like Deception Pass and Bellingham Bay. http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/creel/puget/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;