COLUMNS

65 FOR THE LOVE OF THE TUG Better Late Than Never

Sara and the sunrise were like two peas in a pod when it came to hitting the water for winter-runs. And then her life changed and she had to put those first-light casts on hold. The question was, would the fish still bite in the afternoon for her?

81 NORTHWEST PURSUITS Ice-out Trout

Trout fishing won’t kick off in earnest for another month or two, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t good opportunities to be had in mid- to late winter as the ice melts off lakes. Jason shares waters to look to and tactics to try for February and March ’bows, cutts and more.

111 CHEF IN THE WILD A Tale Of Two Fish

When a long cold snap put a lid on his local reservoir, Chef Randy took note. That’s because ice fishing can be pretty darned good there. The only question was, how to cook its fish, which can taste a little off – or was that really even a quandry at all in winter?

143 ON TARGET 5 Top Coyote Calibers; New Turkey Shotguns, Optics

In midwinter, Dave W.’s attention focuses on two things: all the new offerings coming out of SHOT Show, and coyotes. He shares five top caliber choices that will send songdogs into the “Great Hereafter,” as well as details new gobbler guns from Mossberg and glass from German Precision Optics, Bushnell and Steiner.

153 BECOMING A HUNTER Offseason Training: The Time To Start Is Now!

If last fall’s hunts left you sore, tired and – how do we put this politely? – wishing you’d been able to get a little further afield from the rig than physical fitness or stamina allowed, now’s the time to start fixing that ahead of this coming season. Our main motivator Dave A. has workout and diet advice to get you on your way!

161 GUN DOG Mind Reading Is A Two-way Street

From the moment you bring a gun dog pup home, it starts reading your eyes to anticipate your next move. You owe it to your pup to be able to do the same for it. Scott shares the importance of mind reading between two- and four-legged hunting partners.

Arecent Washington State Academy of Sciences report that found “the preponderance of evidence” shows harbor seals and sea lions are “a contributing factor in the decline and depression of salmon populations“ in Puget Sound and the state’s coast, and that there’s “an urgency to implement management strategies in the short term to take action while testing interventions,“ is beginning to get shopped around more seriously in the court of public opinion.

“Sea lions, seals might be hampering WA salmon recovery. What can be done?” read the headline of a major Seattle Times article published on the topic last month. Even as the newspaper generally tapped the brakes on the idea and the report itself is quick to state that given “ecological complexity” in the circles that salmon and seals swim in, there is “substantial uncertainty about the degree to which pinnipeds have and currently are depressing salmon stocks,” it’s all a prelude to possibly Doing Something about what fishermen have long understood to be a problem for the runs and our ways of life.

Culling some pinnipeds in the Salish Sea and on the coast would likely require an act of Congress to amend the Marine Mammal Protection Act and while that’s a big lift, it’s not impossible either. We saw that with a late 2018 tweak allowing for enhanced removals of Californias and Stellers at Bonneville Dam and Willamette Falls, chokepoints where 99 of the barking fish-eaters have been culled since October 2020. The effort at the falls has in part dramatically decreased the odds that at least one wild Willamette River winter steelhead run would go extinct if nothing had been done. Lake Washington’s steelhead had no such luck with Herschel et al, who et all.

W.S.A.S.’S REPORT IS linked to ongoing southern resident killer whale concerns and was issued in November. Governor Inslee’s proposed 2023-25 budget requests $940,000 from state lawmakers to “expand” marine mammal diet surveys in the Salish Sea and “identify nonlethal actions to deter them from eating salmon and steelhead.”

Where the report found some soft deterrents were somewhat effective on naïve pinnipeds – that is, those that hadn’t become accustomed to prey buffets at migratory congestion points – there were limits and “in some situations, lethal removal may be more effective.” It's important to note that outsized predation is occurring not just in areas of manmade chokepoints, but in the wild, per se, too.

The rub? “The major risks of lethal removals appear largely social and political rather than risks to pinniped populations as a whole,” the report summarized. Indeed, it’ll take a lot of pushing and there will be plenty of crosscurrents in the form of confounding findings and shrill outcry from the usual suspects, but the over-rewilding of predator populations in highly human-altered environments is a problem that requires addressing. We can do this again, and must. –Andy Walgamott