NMFS Approval Of Skagit-Sauk Steelhead Plan Drags On

There are enough wild steelhead forecasted to return to the Skagit and Sauk this winter to have opened a five-day-a-week season back on February 1, but a month into the fishery window there’s still no sign of the federal OK that would allow that to proceed.

That’s leaving anglers chomping at the bit to get on the legendary North Cascades rivers, where 5,211 fish are expected back, but also wondering what the heck the hold-up is.

The nut is that WDFW and three local tribes submitted a new 10-year resource management plan for the fishery last year and the National Marine Fisheries Service put it out for a 30-day public comment that wrapped up January 23.

Hopes for a quick turn-around since then have slowly faded – a February 11 rumor had approval just a week to 10 days out – and the chance to work the waters with plugs, spoons, flies and more are getting a bit skinnier by the day. Under the plan, catch and release fishing on the ESA-listed stock can be allowed into April.

I’ve been pestering NMFS for several weeks now for progress reports and this afternoon spokesman Michael Milstein got back to me about my latest email.

“It really is a staffing and resources issue,” Milstein stated. “We have to do this right because we can expect challenges that could otherwise force us to do it again. We have one small team that is also preparing for setting salmon seasons and other demands. They are some of the hardest working biologists in the region and they do an amazing job, but they can do only so much so fast.”

Those reasons will be familiar to those of us who anxiously awaited federally approved hatchery genetic management plans for Northwest salmon and steelhead programs that piled up on the feds’ collective desk in the not too distant past, the mid-2010s, following a series of lawsuits and scrambles to get Endangered Species Act coverage for production programs.

Besides dealing with this year’s North of Falcon and South of Falcon salmon seasons, NMFS staffers have also been chewing through a bunch of petitions filed last summer by the likes Native Fish Society, Wild Fish Conservancy and others.

In January, the feds found that listing Oregon Coast Chinook might be warranted, and last month they said the same of Olympic Peninsula steelhead.

That at least means Skagit-Sauk steelhead are a little closer to the front of the line, at a time of year when setting salmon seasons sucks up a buttload of energy and resources.

“Once we finish, the specific dates and logistics will be up to WDFW,” stated Milstein.

On a related note, WDFW brass asked anglers at yesterday’s North of Falcon to support a budget request for $467,000 a year for four years to work on the plans needed to get federal OKs to support hatchery production and more but went unfunded in Governor Inslee’s two-year spending plan.

Agency legislative director Tom McBride acknowledged it wasn’t a very sexy line item, but he expressed worry, given the litigious propensities of Wild Fish Conservancy and the “pressure to update permits up and down the (Columbia) river.”