spawning bed closures

[hustlerrjim]

Almost everybody agreed with me {amazingly]in my post about the screw traps, that closing the spawning beds to fishing was an exellent idea,
I thank you for it
But-- this should be carried out on all rivers,if we are to have a fishery in a few years,
Each steel head chapter or groups such as tillamook anglers should choose a river,pick a deadline [I would say the dam hole on the trask]
and take the people that have the political clout to carry out your wishes fishing.
some people call it a-- kissing-I call it informing the right people to a problem you see
and a simple solution to the problem.
the commisioners will listen and act to your wishes if they know about it.BUT----
You have to inform them of the problem- better yet take them TO the problem on a fishing trip.
We coughed up 5 fishing trips to get this one done ,but it paid off ,a very small price to pay for what we accomplished.
So pick a river, [I already did for you,] start writing letters,and protect the spawning beds.
Just some food for thought ,if you kill a fish on the spawning beds you are killing 4,000 potential fish.Think about it.

[Point-of-Sale Clerk]

Hustlerjim

It should not be that surprising that many people agreed with closing the upper parts of a river to protect spawning beds. Good simple ideas backed by good simple data is more than likely what will be needed to make positive changes in the current fisheries environment. Although this would tend to reduce the historical angling access that many sport fishermen have utilized it is a logical step that should be taken to increase natural production, but so would reducing commercial impacts on all non-hatchery fish. I believe that if we want to make these kinds of changes on a statewide scale we are going to have to have a multi- pronged attack. We should do as you suggest but also write and ask for support from each affected water basin councils. We should also use the upcoming Native Fish Conservation Policy Taskforce deliberations to make this position heard and implemented. Because ODFW is currently under the gun to get this policy in place before the current governor leaves office there is a chance to force this kind of change through in a timely manner. Because this new policy is to be based on the Oregon Plan and the Oregon Plan places much emphasis on Basin Councils and public involvement this type of idea should get better acknowledgement then it would in other forums.

The following is the current list of invited voting organizations on the taskforce:

Save Our Salmon
Governor's Natural Resources Office
ODFW
STEP
NW Sportfishing Industry Assn
Assn of NW Steelheaders
Oregon BASS Federation
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Assn
Salmon for All
Oregon Forest Industry Council
Oregon Cattleman's Assn
Oregon Farm Bureau
League of Oregon Cities
Mid Coast Watershed Council
National Audubon Society
Oregon Trout
Native Fish Society
Save Our Wild Salmon
American Fisheries Society

Jim, e-mail me if you think of some other way I can help

*** Clerk

[cosmo]

I wish it were all so simple. Protect the beds and bam! rivers full of fish. I've cought plenty of chrome chinook above the dam hole. Just go immediately following a really high water. I've caught tons of steelhead, beautiful one, in the upper water shed. On the other hand I've caught plenty of very dark fish in lower river sections. Depends on the year. When you are discussing coastal rivers, the whole river is a spawning area.
No easy solutions on deadlines. I see deadlines as managing for the worst behavior at the expense of those who conduct themselves properly. You can accomplish the same results with angler education and some old fashioned peer pressure.

[cosmo]

The more I read this, the more danger I see in it. When it comes down to it Hustlerjim, any fish, wherever you kill it, is potentially 4,000 fish. It is a slippery slope when you seek to boost production through harvest reductions.

[Thumper]

I still don't see the difference between killing or releasing a steelhead or salmon in the lower river vs. the same thing on or near the spawning beds. What am I missing?

[ 05-20-2002, 11:38 AM: Message edited by: Thumper ]

[Point-of-Sale Clerk]

“It is a slippery slope when you seek to boost production through harvest reductions.”

Thank you for making so clear what is wrong with our current management practices. Anything but reducing my harvest level… please, who can we expect to make the correct decisions if not us? Each user group is going to have to give something to aid in increasing long-term health of our fisheries.

Cosmo, besides building more hatcheries and overloading our rivers with hatchery smolts that tend to replace wild fish as opposed to augment them, what would you recommend?

*** Clerk

[cosmo]

If harvest is the probelm, then harvest restrictions will fix it. But the fact is, harvest is not the problem. When I refer to coastal fall chinook, I'm not talking hatchery fish, thanks.

These fish have withstood huge harvest in their histories, that is, with the proper habitat in place. The same number of spawners, under different conditions, can produce massive, or putrid returns. Seeding the habitat to ever increasing levels does not provide ever increasing returns without regard to the habitat.

Before you hit me up for answers, please show me a problem. This year's coastal fall chinook run is expected to be of historical proportions. These are wild fish, thriving.
Deadlines around estuary mouths are opening early, commercial troll catch will tally over one hundred thousand fish, but you want to restrict river fishermen?

Thanks Thumper for flushing out the core of the discussion.

[cosmo]

Don't get me wrong in this whole thing. Deadlines are well intentioned, but they just will not produce impactful results.

On to other things. Estuariies. The solutions to estuary probelms are numerous and inexpensive. They're called shovels. Shovels to breech dikes and allow estuaries to function like they should. We have precious few true rivers anymore. We have plenty of glorified drainage ditches. Water needs to go where it likes. It needs ground to cover. Fish need side channels, hiding places, feeding places, and room to move. They need habitat. And that is exactly what we've diked, filled, developed, planted and grazed.

This is the reality of it. And i'm sure not saying we should move Tillamook, oust a bunch of dairy farmers, and relocate Fred Meyer. I'm not much on going backwards in time. Where there were willing sellers, I'd say buy it and reclaim the land for the bays. Where there still exists good habitat, protect it.

The biggest probelm with estuaries is that all the land is waterfront, and as so it is extremely valuable.

[Point-of-Sale Clerk]

Cosmo

Amen :wink: :wink: :smile:

[TheRogue]

Deadlines would be a fantastic idea, if everything was so neat. I've seen chinook spawning just above the PP&L hole on the Salmon River, and it's just out of tidewater. I also regularly see people targeting spawners all the way up to the base of the current deadline....so what to do about that??

Education and peer pressure.


Estuaries....

I believe there's a little success story going on in the Salmon R. estuary?? Now that some of the lower dikes have been breached, and the water is allowed to back up into some of it's historical marshland, there seems to be a corresponding increase in the silver population(oh, I mean coho, just the Southern Oregon in me talking).

kyle

[ 05-20-2002, 03:35 PM: Message edited by: TheRogue ]

[Point-of-Sale Clerk]

TheRogue

The work and the study that is and has been taking place on the Salmon River are very important. This represents perhaps the first time restoration can be studied over from beginning to end with reduced impacts from external sources. Unfortunately, I believe the data being gathered may end up being somewhat skewed from the lack of Marine Derived Nutrients from naturally spawning salmon and lamprey but overall a good look at what happens and how different areas are utilized by juvenal salmon.

If you wish to see all the current data being collected on the Salmon River Estuary please access the following link:

ftp://ftp.dfw.state.or.us/pub/Bottom/

(Note: you may need to copy and paste this FTP link into your address bar to make it work)

[Snagly]

Thumper I think there are at least three differences between targeting fish that are weeks or months away from spawning and fish that are on their redds:

1. Fresh fish have more fat reserves and more likely to recover (esp. in colder water) from a C & R experience

2. Fish that are weeks away from dumping their loads could still succumb to natural predation or other natural factors could prevent them from spawning. So I can rationalize C & R'ing fish even though there is going to be some mortality (say, 5%) by thinking that the fish that die may not have made it to their redds.

3. It's not particularly sporting fishing on the redds. Depending on circumstances, some times the fish are very easy to hook. Other times I see (too many) foul hooked fish.

So I think there are several valid reasons for drifting or wading past spawners and simply congratulating them on having successfully "swum the gauntlet" rather than dropping a fly or lure in front of their noses.

Now what about targeting in fish holding in runs just below spawning flats? You know that they will be spawning, too, if not in the next hour then the next week. I'm not particularly proud to admit that I've fished for these fish before . . . simply because they technically aren't on their redds. (Oh, I catch a few unripened fish in the mix and that lets me justify to myself why I fish these spots rather than move farther downstream and look for fresh late arrivals.)

[DanS]

It's not particularly sporting fishing on the redds <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">It's not sporting at all. In fact, it's kinda pitiful that one would intentionally resort to such tactics in order to catch a fish. :rolleyes:

Anybody who's spent any time on the river has landed fish that squirt eggs all over the place or **** all over when they're landed. It happens and not necessarily in this so-called "spawning water". But to actually target a fish you see on a redd is pitiful. If I saw somebody doing it, I'd have to raise the "cracker" flag to full mast and try to ridicule them into stopping.

Spawning fish don't follow human deadlines. I suppose reasonable deadlines could be set, but I don't know if that's true on all rivers.

[Point-of-Sale Clerk]

Cosmo

Does the same thinking apply to spring Chinook… Or Coho?

You are very correct that increased numbers of smolts do not translate into increased numbers of returning adults (that’s why I believe hatchery production is and can be a waste of resources) but I feel that an increase in the size of the breeding population and an increase in the number of spawning adults will translate into a healthier self-sustaining population in the long run.

As to the comparison of commercial harvest to sport harvest I would have a difficult time arguing for continuing the current inequities that manifests itself each year from having a ODFW commission that is so pro-commercial harvest. However if sport fishermen made this concession with the stipulation that commercial harvest would be reduced by perhaps half, we could see better fishing if not better harvesting.

Problem… What can we do to improve or increase estuary habitat? (currently the largest bottleneck in adult spawner recruitment next to ocean conditions and commercial harvest)