But after decades of “managing” the Skagit’s wild steelhead to extinction, the ESA-listing and a few lawsuits forced the state to change how it managed wild steelhead on the Skagit. Direct tribal commercial harvest was curtailed, the planting of hatchery fish was temporarily banned, and the recreational angling season was cut short, greatly reducing angling pressure during the late winter and early spring months when the struggling wild steelhead returns peaked. And wouldn’t you know, the Skagit’s steelhead stocks rebounded to numbers that have not been seen in years.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that taking these two major threats out of the picture would enable resilient wild steelhead populations to recover and rebuild. What it does take is the strength in numbers and determination to convince state and federal fish managers to do the right thing for wild steelhead and adopt a more conservation-oriented management approach – an approach that restores and sustains wild steelhead runs for future generations while preserving an appropriate level of angling opportunity.
Wild steelhead are resilient creatures that have used their unrelenting determination to survive and overcome a myriad of obstacles that man has thrown in their path. But it is time for us to do our part and remove as many of those obstacles as we can. If we do that, these resilient fish will return in droves.
While we may never see 100,000 wild steelhead swimming in the Skagit, Nooksack, or Snohomish again, we have the ability to dramatically rebuild these runs to levels we have not seen in decades. We have the ability to make Steelhead Country great again. Now, our community just needs the power to make it happen.