Speaking of WDFW Failures....

[coastal steelheader]

I was thinking about how poorly WDFW manages our fisheries and it dawned on me.....How are they managing to kill off salmon and steelhead fisheries regardless of their "efforts" to preserve them? But here is the funnier question.....How are the warmwater fisheries thriving regardless of WDFWs efforts to kill them off? Cant they do anything right?

If it were me, I'd look at a lake and think about what would thrive in those conditions. Lakes age and get shallower and warmer with more weeds. Use those lakes to grow big bass, crappies and maybe some catfish. Use the cooler reservoirs with feeder streams that trout can spawn in. In both cases, you get bigger and healthier fish.

Lakes like American Lake, can use more predators to thin out overpopulated and stunted panfish populations. Maybe some Walleyes?

I have never understood this either. The planter trout they have now seem fragile compared to the ones I fished for as a kid. We would routinely catch and release smaller trout and they would swim merrily away. Now you unhook them and no matter how much care you use, they go belly up and you end up retrieving them. I wonder how many of them actually make it to become "holdovers" - it used to be the lakes were filled with them. I don't think its the lakes - I have caught some huge trout in weed infested shallow lakes. I have always contended that the power chow/dough feed they use in the hatcheries just produces weaker fish.

The warmwater species are more hearty and honestly they taste better. Give me some yellow perch, crappie, or walleye fillets any time. It's a good way to get the kids interested in fishing too since since there is always a bluegill or perch looking to murder their nightcrawler

 

[coastal steelheader]

And they are SUPPOSED to use them....
Up here on the Chehalis river they yank em out of the net by the tail, drop em on the deck a few times then grab em by the gills & throw em overboard!!! They have been filmed doing it with WDFW employees on board watching!!!!

I witness this yearly on the Chehalis. Just go behind Wal Mart in Aberdeen or to the 28th St Boat Launch

It's referred to as the Chehalis Fling

 

[jsparks747]

I witness this yearly on the Chehalis. Just go behind Wal Mart in Aberdeen or to the 28th St Boat Launch

It's referred to as the Chehalis Fling

There is a gillnetting boat up by my parent's vacation house. I personally don't see the sport or the purpose of it. The look on their faces when I pull up with both me and my girlfriends salmon limits filled and them not having caught a single fish is priceless though.