BY ANDY WALGAMOTT, NORTHWEST SPORTSMAN MAGAZINE
It’s been more than a decade since state anglers last fished the lower Skokomish for hatchery salmon, but some haven’t given up on being able to one day again run a bobber and eggs down the Hood Canal river.
Puget Sound Anglers State Board President Ron Garner earlier this week asked WDFW Director Kelly Susewind to request the federal Department of the Interior reverse or withdraw a 2016 opinion on the southern boundary of the Skokomish Reservation that has effectively kept recreational fishermen off the river.
Since that DOI solicitor general opinion was issued, a state closure has been in effect, “preventing bank anglers from accessing what had been a very popular recreational fishery on hatchery origin Chinook and Coho salmon,” Garner wrote in a letter to the director as well as the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission.
Huge surpluses of kings, silvers and chums far beyond broodstock needs return to the George Adams Hatchery and could otherwise be harvested.
“We as recreational anglers are very concerned about loss of access to this and other fisheries and feel this is an appropriate time to request the Government to review this issue and hopefully concur with the facts set forth in your October 3, 2019 letter and withdraw the Solicitor Opinion,” Garner added.
In that 2019 letter, Susewind argued the opinion, which came down in the last year of the second Obama Administration, “was issued without input by Washington State, and our subsequent analysis shows it is factually and legally deficient,” and he asked that it be reversed or withdrawn by the first Trump Administration.
Nothing happened, but the next year the Skokomish Tribe tried to leverage the issue at the annual salmon-season-setting confab known as North of Falcon by demanding WDFW withdraw its “false claims” of ownership to the Skokomish or it would oppose the final WDFW-tribal List of Agreed Fisheries, or LOAF, which outlines everyone’s seasons.
Susewind replied that the WDFW was “not prepared to disclaim ownership,” and, ultimately, the LOAF was signed that year, but the issue around the Skokomish is brought up annually at North of Falcon by recreational interests and is subject of “sporadic discussions” with the tribe, per Garner.
In the aforementioned opinion, DOI’s Hilary C. Tompkins reasoned that tribal fishers’ use of weirs in the 1800s “required use and control of the entire width of rivers and their beds.” In modern times, the Skokomish Tribe has also expressed justifiable “outrage” after “human waste from sport fishers” led to the closure of shellfishing near the mouth of the Skokomish due to high fecal coliform levels.
WDFW’s case on the boundary is strongly based on an 1874 letter from federal agent Edwin Eells to Washington, D.C., that stated, “The present reservation lies on the North side of the river extending from the mouth about 3 1/2 miles up the river.”
Whether Director Susewind and ultimately the Trump Administration’s DOI act on Garner’s request remains to be seen, but the 2026-27 LOAF lists the Skokomish River as “Closed to salmon” for state anglers and open in August and October for tribal fishermen.
Meanwhile, southern Hood Canal below the Skokomish will again feature a four-hatchery-Chinook limit and two-pole fishing with the endorsement.
In other state-tribal fisheries news, WDFW reported today that the Quinault Indian Nation has asked federal court to reconsider the denial of their motion to open subproceedings around expanding their usual and accustomed fishing grounds to Willapa Bay and the lower Lower Columbia.
And on Icicle Creek near Leavenworth, the Yakama Nation has announced a one-day spring Chinook opener for tribal fishermen on June 6, which will follow a one-day, June 5 C&S opener for Wenatchi Members of the Colville Confederated Tribes. Yesterday, WDFW said there would be no sport opener this year, as the salmon had “migrated past the recreational fishing boundary meaning there is no longer a fishery to open,” per a spokesman.
