From the gravel banks along the Cascade River in the Skagit watershed, a few fishing nets stretched into the flow one sunny day in May, dancing in the river’s clear and swift waters.
The nets were set by Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe fishers hoping to harvest some of the first salmon of the season, a spring chinook run returning to spawn and complete their lifecycle.
“We’re targeting a very successful hatchery population,” said Grant Kirby, fish program manager for the tribe.
In recent years, steady returns of chinook produced at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Marblemount Fish Hatchery have supported this treaty harvest, which has minimal impact on natural-origin fish in the Skagit River system. The fishery provides sustenance and income for the tribe’s fishing families.
“This is the tribe’s most lucrative fishery as of now,” Kirby said.
Since 2020, the tribe has authorized licensed fishers to deploy set nets on a section of the Cascade River during the hatchery chinook run, which occurs over several weeks in the spring. The number of licenses has grown from six that first year to 25 in 2026.
“There’s a lot of participation,” said Michael Wolten, a tribal fisherman and director of the tribe’s natural resources department, while placing his own two-fish catch on ice. “The level of interest is great to see.”
Several generations engage with the fishery, with elders and descendants of some fishers watching from the riverbank while their relatives set or check their nets, and observing as the catch is processed for data collection by the tribe’s natural resources department.
With a relatively controlled target population and a modest number of treaty harvesters, the catch is closely monitored. Fishers bring their catch to the natural resources department office for sampling, which includes the retrieval of tags from hatchery-origin fish, documentation of the size and sex of each fish, and genetic sampling of the occasional bycatch of other salmon species.
Former Sauk-Suiattle Chairman Benjamin Joseph’s children stood by one day as their dad’s catch was processed, witnessing the telltale beep of coded wire tags embedded in the snouts of hatchery-origin fish.
Karen Misanes, a Sauk-Suiattle councilwoman, had two generations in tow that day, her adult daughter and toddler granddaughter, whose excitement around seeing salmon—some of the fish nearly her own size—was palpable.
Above: Sauk-Suiattle tribal fisherman Benjamin Joseph, a former chairman of the tribe, adjusts his net during a chinook fishery on the Cascade River in May. Photos and story by Kimberly Cauvel
