I went in and edited my last reply because it had some unnecessary terms and statements.
Ty, gear restrictions wouldn't work in this situation because you are intentionally trying to catch coho and there is no gear that will differentiate between a wild and hatchery coho.
Barbless hooks are already mandatory and the studies on that surprisingly don’t make much difference.
I find it a lot easier and quicker to release a fish caught on a barbless hook myself however.
As far as hooking mortality I believe it is being figured in at approx. 15% but I think it is much higher especially on the fish that are not handled properly.
Some wild coho aren’t going to make it no matter how careful you are and I have been told that a fish hooked in the tongue or eye fall into that category.
But it does make a huge difference on the way they are handled!
A wild coho netted and slammed down on the deck (some folks methodology of quickly getting the fish out of the net) doesn’t have near the chance of survival of those that are released in the water by simply sliding a gaff down the leader and pulling the hook free.
I do hope you understand my frustration as I have been seeing this and hearing about these kind of actions since 1998 when the ocean coho season was reopened.
I’ve tried talking to them (charters) about it for 5 years or so now and usually the first response I get is; “you know there really isn’t any wild fish”…
Not trying to stir things up but looking to get ifisher’s involved in solutions to these problems.
Last year I brought this issue up at the Ocean Salmon Industry meeting in South Beach as difficult as it was for me.
I then talked with Wayne Butler the Oregon Charter boat association president after the meeting adjourned and showed him both the article from the Oregonian and a post on ifish that were very disturbing.
Wayne was totally shocked and had a difficult time believing this was taking place on the charters and promised me he would notify all the charter offices.
He came through with his promise and I will post the email that was forwarded to most if not all charter boat offices and myself:
email from Wayne Butler:
Quote:
please pass this on or post it in your offices
To all OCSA members and interested parties:
By now most of you will have heard, we are looking at a much more liberal coho season this year. The tentative numbers we are looking at are between 50 and 70 thousand, which is a great increase over the 22,500 we had last year.
The annual workshop to develop our salmon options was held in Newport on March 5th and turned out to be a very good meeting. We put together 3 options, all 3 are very appealing.
Option 1 was a July 1 thru July 31, 2 fish per day and August 1 thru August 31, 2 fish per day of which only 1 may be a coho, 7 days a week.
Option 2 was July 1 thru August 15, 2 fish per day, 7 days a week.
Option 3 was July 1 thru July 31, 2 fish per day, 7 days a week.
All these options are a 7 day a week fisheries. The final number adopted by the counsel will determine which option we can start with, the thing to keep in mind is that these options are tweekable if industry has other ideas. So all in all it was a good meeting. The only disturbing news was delivered by a private individual who showed me a message that was posted on IFISH.Net.
It was a letter from a person who went salmon fishing on a charter boat that advertises on IFISH.Net. His experience was not good. He was very upset about the way wild coho were handled. They were netted and thrown on the deck and left lay while other hatchery fish were being landed. He said the deckhand even cut the adipose fin off of one of the wild fish before he threw it back. This individual stated that he would not spend $70 to witness that kind of abuse of our wild stocks again.
One of the factors in determining our allowable catch is the mortality rate and with these kind of stories going around it does nothing but hurt our industry. If it is determined that we are killing more fish than expected due to poor handling practices we all stand to lose.
The charter boat operators in our state are looked at and considered professionals. Therefore we are held to a high standard. The thing to remember is we are not only being watched by the state but by the public as well. So I'll end this by saying: Let's take pride in our industry and association and slap the deckhand up along side the head if you catch him doing any of these things. Have a great season.
Wayne Butler
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<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Again I’m not trying to stir things up but to show some that are not aware what has been taking place out there on the ocean.
I realize that a lot of the private sports need education also on the importance of these fish and responsible ways of handling them.
Now last years very disappointing experience that I posted took place after that letter (email) was sent to the charter offices.
I have seen a lot of improvement amongst certain charters in dealing with these fish but there is obviously work to be done with some of them yet.
Wayne Butler is very professional person, understands the importance of handling these wild fish properly.
Even though I have never fished with Wayne, I could tell by his reactions and replies that he is responsible out there with these fish.
I really liked what I saw in Jeurgan (Tacklebuster) last year and it might have something to do with his ex-deckhand to an extent.
Carl is a young kid and knows the difference between a wild and hatchery fish being an avid river fisherman.
Carl told me last year that he could identify approx. 80% of the coho in the water as to whether they had a fin or not.
Carl would slide his hand down the leader of the wild fish and pull the hook out by hand. Outch!
I informed Carl of the “gaff method”.
Carl has now received his charter license and is running the Amigo for Perry York.
Guarantee you won’t see wild fish netted and slammed down on the deck of the Amigo!
Jeurgan got real lucky and is getting my little buddy Mikey Ashmon for a deckhand this year who is highly respected on both the rivers and the ocean.
Mikey will basically laugh at someone that claims there is no difference between a wild and hatchery fish and inform you that he sees the difference on the rivers all the time.
So you won’t see mishandled wild coho on the Tacklbuster once again. Guaranteed!
I fished with Loren (the Affair) last year out of Dockside Charters and we would do our best to identify the fin or lack of in the water and away went the net and out came the gaff if an adipose was seen.
I didn’t personally fish any of the other charters last year so I am clueless on some but know of 4 or 5 of them that need to change their methods of handling wild coho.
One charter captain disagreed with me and swore up and down that he kills 70% of his released wild coho when I mentioned the mortality was figured at 14-15% or so but a lot of us figured it was higher.
He said he “rip’s them”!
Only way he can get ‘em to the boat for the tourist he claimed.
I believe he said he is using a 5/0 or 6/0 hook!
So the purpose of this thread is for those of you that want to attempt to make a difference in improving the mortality of wild coho and that is all.
If you have any ideas for Lance, email him.
A quarter million wild coho that returned again this last fall/winter is good news but there could have been many more that didn’t make it.
Reread your post Mike (Salty Dog’s forum) and I am glad to hear there are some attitude changes there as I have dealt with some of the charters in Newport back in the late 90’s both at the docks and at meetings and there were some really closed minds back then.
Horrific biology!
I can understand the frustration but everyone should be thankful that they are even allowed to fish coho in the ocean that are amongst the OCN’s that are still presently listed as “threatened” on the ESA.
In ’98 they were very happy to get their coho season back but now it seems that they have taken it for granite and are complaining that they should be able to kill the first two that they catch.
Ain’t going to happen this year!
Keep up the good work Mike and maybe you can pass on to some of the charters that the public is demanding better practices by some of them.
Dano
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