Rumour ... of sturgeon retention closure

[Pilar]

Heard a rumour on the boat ramp at Garibaldi, Saturday morning. It goes like this ... Sturgeon retention will be cut off in April this year in the lower Columbia River. The rumour monger stated that meetings were discussing this and the Springer seasons as well.

Does anyone know about this .. could it be true?

[ 01-21-2002: Message edited by: Pilar ]</p>

[STGRule]

The sport sturgeon meeting was held on the 15th. Don't know what happened but I'll see what I can dig up tomorrow. Someone over at CRM should know.

[BottomFeeder]

I was wondering why do we even fish commercially? I don't think it makes economic sense does it? Especially now in the down economy how much per pound can sturgeon actually sell for? How much money per fish is generated as opposed to sport fishing?


Just curious

Brian

[STGRule]

Pilar:I can partialy answer 3&4 for you.
3) Fish are counted from the landing tickets at the processors. This is usually reported by weight and sampling by the states at the processor gives a mean fish weight to divide the total poundage by for a count. From what I understand (and I may be incorrect) incidental catches count toward the quota. After the quota is used up they can't be bought by processors. Since the actual catch is very small (if any) when the nets are fished for salmon exclusively, the incidental catch can be minimized.
4) Fish numbers are estimated (Note the word estimated) by mark and recapture. In a nut shell, the number of known marked fish are a percentage of the fish caught. If you know you have 100 marked fish and they represent 10% of the catch, you have a population of 1000 fish. This is way over-simplified but is the basic idea.

[ 01-21-2002: Message edited by: STGRule ]</p>

[David Johnson]

STGRule is correct on his answers to 3 & 4.

As far as why commercial fishing is allowed it all has to do with politics and the legislature. It is law that commercial and sport fishing has to co exist. Until it is changed in the legislature that is the way it will be. Back in the 80's there was a huge push by the NW Steelheaders to get patitions signed so that we could vote on gill nets in the Columbia. We had hats that said "Ban Gillnets" and patitions and we even went down to the state capital. It never went through.

I think the biggest reason it didn't is because too many people sit around complaining about it and never do anything.

If you read through that letter about the split, sporties get 40,000 per year and the commercials get 10,000. That makes it heard to agrue they are getting all the fish.

[STGRule]

Pssst David, HER answers.

[birdhunter]

I was waiting for that. :grin:

[David Johnson]

Sorry, guess I wasn't paing attention

[STGRule]

Since there isn't anything to indicate one way or the other, you couldn't have known. :grin:

[dawhunt]

Guys and Gals untill the big sporting good dealers get into the fight we will never get the gillnetters out of the river.They have big business backing them and giveing them money to fight us.Untill we get Luhr Jensen and others plus all the guides and charter org. helping us,and then all the sports fishermen comeing together, we'll never get them out.Thats the bottom line.Cus big money talks !! and they got big money. :depressed:
Bob

[Fishin Magician]

I have an idea....... Have the State hire Waterdog as the full time "Sturgeon Relief Rider". All the boats he goes on are guaranteed to not take home any keepers...... :grin: :grin: :grin: . It would be a lottery type deal, some are lucky , some are not. :shocked: . Just couldn't resist.
John

[David Johnson]

This is an email I just got from NSIA.


A TALE OF TWO FISHERIES, or DO YOU WANT MONTHS AND MONTHS OF CLOSURES FOR STURGEON, OR JUST A COUPLE OF DAYS/WEEK OF NON-RETENTION?

The states of Oregon and Washington have been harvesting on a three year sturgeon agreement whereby the sport fishers harvest 40,000 per year and the commercials harvest 10,000 per year. 2002 is the last year of this agreement. Due to high participation in the below Bonneville sturgeon fishery (approximately 200,000 angler trips/year) over the years, we have had to change bag limits, slot limits and closures to prevent over fishing.

In the latest agreement, NOT SUPPORTED by NSIA, the states have tried block closures. Last year, in an attempt to prevent over harvest, sturgeon fishing was closed the entire months of August and September. NSIA wanted to use a one day/week of non-retention, river wide. A possible scenario would have been, you could keep a sturgeon 6 days per week, river wide. On 1 day per week (It would have to be a weekend day to be sound) you could fish for sturgeon, but not keep a sturgeon. Since the sportfishers overharvested last year, even with 2 months of closure was not enough.

The blocks closures did not work biologically. They worked for the majority of fishers, since there were salmon to fish for in August and September 2001. The problem is, we all know that the salmon fishing of 2001 was an anomaly. In the long run, sturgeon fishing can be what keeps people in the habit of fishing and the industry from starving. Sturgeon has been the ONLY fishing open year round for big fish. We will need it to be open again, when then salmon populations go back normal levels.

THIS MEANS WE NEED TO MANAGE WITH DAYS/WEEK, NOT MONTHS AND MONTH AND MONTHS OF BLOCK CLOSURES.

ODF&W Employees have been pushing for block closures again. They are supported by the SW Washington Anglers and Ilwaaco Charter fleet. Call or E-mail ODF&W and WDF&W and let them know that it is better for your businesses and for overa lll sportfishing opportunity to use a 1 or 2 day per week closure. We can't afford to overharvest sturgeon, they need to be healthy! Block closures are not working, and in the long run, it will put some small marinas out of business.

CALL THE MANAGERS ASAP, and let them know that non-retention days of the week work far better than 3 month/year of block closures!!!!! If you write a short reply to this e-mail, I will take it to the meeting with me tomorrow night. Otherwise write directly to: Guy Norman @ ODF&W, guy.norman@state.or.us (503 872 5252 x5392) OR
Bill Twiet@ WDF&W, tweitwmt@dfw.wa.gov, (360 902 2723)

Be sure to copy NSIA your communications.

There will be stakeholder meeting on Tuesday, January 22. The decision will be made by January 31, so please write immediately!!!

[bait boy]

I hate to say it but I thought the block closures during the peak harvest times for specific regions was going to work well. I still think that they could work.
However, I think that retention should be the only thing that is curtailed. I can go out and catch a keeeper and continue to fish the whole day. That means that the DFW believes I am following the rules and not upgrading my fish or retaining over my limit. so why not let me fish and just not keep them.

NSIA is throwing a fit because it is made up of retailers and direct fishing markets.(I like what they do in general :smile: but I don't appreciate their point of view on this one)

Let me put this in another light that I've heard about from PP. In the Forks, WA area there are harvestable numbers of wild steelhead. the business owners, some guides and such believe that a non retention policy on wild fish will hurt their business tremendously.Forks mayor I cant buy that for a minute. (especially since there are hatcherys on those rivers)

If the sturgeon are in need of protection then lets reduce our allowable take to 7 fish per year, and lets get away form these blanket multi year agreements. Fish live from year to year so why can't we base our decisions on a yearly based agreement that doesn't require "emergency closure" because it is more closely managed.

If not then LETS GO NAIL SOME GATORS :grin: .

We do get more fish than the netters per year

[ 01-22-2002: Message edited by: bait boy ]

[ 01-22-2002: Message edited by: bait boy ]</p>

[Pilar]

Thanks David for the informative post. I have a couple of questions.

1) Why are we not discussing the gill net take of these fish? There are commercial net seasons now for white sturgeon. Could the overfishing problem be related to the recent change from 'Incidental Catch' while netting Salmon to the outright netting of sturgeon?

2) While I can appreciate the dilemma of fishing dependent businesses with respect to the 'Block Closures', you have to believe that people will simply fish the open days. It is really hard for me to see an effective reduction in the number of fish caught. Is a few days off a week the real solution? Why not limit the number per week or month as is done with salmon? You can keep one per month, for example. One side effect of this would be to shift the majority of fish caught to charters hauling the casual fishers and away from the hard core private boaters.

3) Are we counting all of the fish caught? I have been told that the 'incidental' fish caught during other net seasons are not counted. Is this true?

4) Do they really know how many fish we have in the river? How do you count a fish that does not migrate past the counting stations at the dams?


What do you think?

[ 01-21-2002: Message edited by: Pilar ]</p>

[David Johnson]

dawhunt, that is what NSIA is, a group of fishing industry businesses.

Bait boy, If they went by a year by year agreement then they would have to fight for a season every year. And I mean fight, it's a lot of political crap they have to do to get a season. I'm sure they have looked at lowering the yearly number (like as you said to 7) but that doesn't keep all those people who "loose" there tag. That upgrading is just killing more fish too.

It's ok to disagree on this one with NSIA, I've disagreed with some of their positions before too but over all it's because of them that we are having some seasons at all. Without them there wouldn't be any mass marking of spring chinook or coho, without having those fish fin clippped we would not be fishing them on the Columbia, Willamette.....

[WaterDog]

Thanks John. You’re a real confidence booster.

Maybe someone (STGRule) can enlighten me on this but it’s my understanding that “keepers” are 10- 15 years old and reproductive fish are usually over 20 years. We all know that these fish live over 100 years in some cases. I guess my point is, if these numbers are even remotely correct, the harvest may outrun the reproductive cycle. Seems to me lowered limits for both commercial and sport is coming or should come. I could see a program of certain days of retention and other days of C&R. But then this would only concentrate the fishing on those days so it really wouldn’t make much difference. Block closures seem to be a good option.

I agree with David regarding annual tag limits. Too many people “loose” their tag or it gets “accidentally” washed. I also can’t see how anyone would “upgrade” a fish that they already put on a stringer. That is total BS.

[Biteme]

All politics aside
If I am understanding all of this correctly the sturgeon fishery is suffering from to much fishing pressure as a whole regardless of whos catching them. I believe that if there is to be a sustainable sturgeon fishery in the columbia river that we all have to face some facts and quit blaming it on the other guy. I am a fishing guide and the majority of my business comes from the sturgeon fishery. I dont proclaim to know the answers to this dilema but I am a realist and do know first hand that between the sport and commercial fisheries the keeper class sturgeon are getting hammered. For many decades the sturgeon were left to a select group of diehard anglers that in numbers were fairly insignificant to the numbers of anglers that pursued salmon and steelhead. Alot of these Salmon and Steelhead anglers wouldnt be caugt dead fishing for the lowly sturgeon. With the decline of the salmon and steelhead stocks the salmon steelhead purists needing something to fish for decided to try sturgeon and they found out what a wonderful gamefish that it is. The simple fact is that we are keeping to many sturgeon, and with the sport quota being much higher than the commerical quota I dont see where shutting down the commercial quota and allowing the sportfishing quota to be increased is going to fix anything, we will still have over 50,000 keeper sized fish in the freezer.
One thing that I have observed is that alot of the time as with other types of fishing people fish with members of there family who live with each other and share the same freezer. Lets just put together a scenario here. A family group of three people who fish together alot fills there 10 fish per year tags. that is 30 sturgeon in the freezer, now I know alot of people dont fill there tags but alot of them do. 30 fish in the freezer is alot of sturgeon to freezer burn and go to waste, and if you dont can the surgeon it does diminish in quality even frozen. I have first hand observed these freezer filling missions, and would like to say there is nothing wrong with taking what you will use, but I do belive that alot of this fish goes to waste because of the more is always better mentality.
Again I am not sure what the answer is for all parties concerned is but it would seem that if we are taking to many fish the answer would be to reduce the annual catch limits and maybe dont allow duplicate tags. I dont think that block closures or days of the week closures do anything at all because we just adjust our schedule to go after them when we can, which really increases the pressure on the days that it is open.

Food for thought:
say we allowed only hunting for spike deer with a three deer a year limit and the season was year around, would there be any adult bucks in 5 years.

alot of big game management is done with overall herd makeup in mind. Maybe we need to look at some of these techniques with regard to sturgeon.

maybe we need to look at the slot limits that are allowing us to target one particular age class of fish, as well as other posibilities.

The only thing for sure is that we need to take some effective management approches to ensure that the greatest sturgeon fishery in the world remains that way for future generations to come and if that means that "ALL" of us need to face some unpleasant realities then so be it.

[Biteme]

I just had another thought
It would be interesting to see how the keeper sturgeon stats check out as far as the size of the fish go. I would bet the overwhelming percentage of the keepers taken are in the 42-48 inch range. hows this for an option. 10 fish annual limit with 5 of those between 42 and 50" and 5 between 50 and 60" I think this would greatly reduce to overall catch because trying to get that 50+ incher can be tough

[Hoosier Daddy]

Biteme: Nice post. One of my pet peeves is how so many folks are willing to cut back other user groups, but not their own. Not that everyone shouldn't do their part, but that they SHOULD. We ALL have to be willing to give something up. Problem is so many people try to get over by forcing others to give stuff up so they don't have to. Happens with every resource we have. Human nature I guess.
But it's good to see someone who depends on the resource in question for income still willing to bite the bullet. Kudos.
(Must be from being from such a sensable town!
OK, yeah, I'm from there, so what?)

[SureSet]

Another small detail we shouldn't loose sight of is that there are other places than the lower Columbia to catch these fish. It seems to me that this is a perfect situation for a tag zone limit of fish out of the Lower Columbia (ala Tilamook/Nehalem fall chinook). I understand that some of these same fish move up and down the coast to a degree, but it's a thought. Part of the pressure problem is that the majority of the sturgeon live next to the majority of state population (for Oregon anyway).

SureSet

[FishinBob]

I have only been fishing for sturgeon the last 5 years, so I am a new comer to this. In the
back of my mind I knew that this great fishing sport was too good to be true for long. If it
takes 8 years for fish to get up to 42" and then another 8 to 10 years to go over the 60"
limit that means a fish must survive those 8 to 10 years without being caught. There is a
very small chance that more than 5% of these fish escape to make the 60" oversize limit.
To help prove my point how many fish have you caught over the 50" limit 5 years ago and
how many last year. When I first started sturgeon fishing 5 years ago, we caught several
over 50". Last year we caught zero over 50". To me this shows a very small percentage
escape into the 60" oversize breeding class. So if it has changed so much in just 5 years in
another 5 years will we be happy with only 42" fish? The real problem is that we (yes all of
us) are taking too many fish of the same size. We need about 10-15% escapement into the
oversize class to keep a breeding population that can replenish our yearly take. This new
yearly take will be less than 40k. There is still the problem of how to get fish through the 10
years it takes to go from 42" to 60". A random few months a year of closure will not work,
a few days a week of closure will not work, five years of closure will work but lets no go
there yet.

Sturgeon do have a migration pattern into and out of the columbia. The timing and size of
fish that make this migration is available but I don't have this data. Lets say that fish start to
migrate at about 36-45" and continue the rest of their lives. Also the main migration heads
into fresh water in late spring and stay till early fall before heading back to sea or at least
near the sea. If these fish are allowed to come and go without being caught for the next 10
years our oversized breeding stock will have a new supply of young breeders. There will
also have to be complete closure of near sea fishing or the problem is just moved from
upriver to the river mouths.

How much time can we give up this year (and all remaining years) to still have fish around in
the next 50 years?

[Bigdog]

We use the controlled hunt to manage big game, maybe it's time to use the controlled tags for sturgen. There isn't any easy solution but if we don't pull togethtr sports fisherman and gill netters than there may never be a solution that can work for the both of us.

[Beer Waggin]

Something else to consider is that this isn't just going to be an Oregon/Washington problem. These issues need to be addressed by Calicrapions and Canadians as well. It doesn't make sense for all of us to do our part to preserve a fishery, just to have the folks across the boarders living by the old rules.
I'm not sure that a weekly/daily/monthly closure really helps out our situation to much. I'm not sure that to many people cried about it last year because of the ample salmon numbers. Do the same thing during a bad salmon season and you will see the effects in the economy.
I'd opt for reducing the number of spots on my tag to keep the fishery open year round. I generally try and give the people fishing with me the chances at the fish anyway. I can fish anytime, therefore I hate to stack fish on my tag and reduce my opportunities.

[BottomFeeder]

I was wondering, how come we don't have a sturgeon hatchery? Certainly it would not be the same technology that we use for salmon and steelhead (obviously since that proceedure is fatal). But when considering the number of angler trips for sturgeon vs. salmon/steelhead it might make sense. I know Oregon has problems with keeping current facilities open let alone a new one (don't even get me started on the current Oregon deficit) but considering the number of angler trips for sturgeon and constant harvest concerns......It might not be such a bad idea.


Brian

[cosmo]

Dave,
For what it's worth, I'm with you. The best part about sturgeon fishing is to be able to pick up and go- river running pure mud- no problem. Sturgeon are one of the few year-round fisheries we have and I'd rather have to let 'em go on days here and there than be cut off all together.

[ 11-25-2002, 06:06 PM: Message edited by: ****** ]

[STGRule]

Okay Pilar, this is what I found out today. The meeting that was held on the 15th and the one being held tonight in Vancouver are to hear from organized fishing groups (although the general public is welcome). These are being held to decide what types of options will be used regarding sport fishing quotas. No decision has been made about anything yet. The options that came from the first meeting include: block closures and many days of the week closures. Some different ideas may come tonight. These options will be reviewed and a decision made on January 31st at the Joint State Hearing after the Compact meeting to set commercial seasons.

Waterdog: In the lower Columbia River, with slot limits of 42" - 60", the general ages of fish in this slot limit is 11-19 years old. This is based on ageing fish of known length. The problem with this is ageing sturgeon is a very imprecise science. We have suspected for a long time that we are underestimating the ages of the fish. This was proved with bone marks (from OTC injections) on fish that had been re-captured and re-aged. We found less annuli than we should have for the time the fish had been at large. This means that it's very likely that the fish are vulnerable to the fishery for longer than the about 10 years we think now. We are trying to find a way to make the ageing process more precise so the modeling programs that determine the exploitable numbers in a population will be better. Unfortunatly that will likely translate into a smaller quota for everyone.

[Trick]

Just another thought......With sturgeon living 100+ years and each consecutive year a breeding fish should produce more offspring...right? Wouldn't it stand to reason that there are more sturgeon fry hatching each year? Or are gillnetters killing off the breeders?

[SHLEPROCK]

I just dont see that there is a problem with the way the current regulations are now, I've seen many changes over the years. While those changes were being made I didn't like them but as time passed I seen the overall benifit to the fishery. With an annual quota easily met every year I myself don't see a need to change but if they had to I would be in favor of size limit of 44 to 60.

[STGRule]

Trick:
The only problem with your scenerio is that sturgeon only spawn every 3-7 years. It's probably around 3-4. That means that of your total population of female fish (~1/2 in a healthy population) you have only about 33% (that's a generous amount) of the females to spawn. Let's say you have a population of 1000 breeders. Then if it's a really healthy population, you have about 500 females. Then you only have 165 (optimistic) to 125 (still pretty good) breeders that year. Then you get a good oversize fishery that year and 70-100 of those get caught a few times. Then 1/3ish of those don't spawn that year due to stress from repeated catching and they re-absorb their eggs (Yes, it does happen. How many breeders do you have left that year to successfully spawn? How about adding a low water year with no spill to stimulate spawning and you get NO spawning at all that year. This happens all the time in the pools above Bonneville Dam. We didn't document ANY spawning in any pool in 2001. If it was simple, it would be easy. :depressed:

[ssteelheadsteve]

The only solution to the problem.
VASECTOMY. GET ONE TODAY :shocked:

[Hoosier Daddy]

ssteelheadsteve, you hit it on the head. Too many fishers not enough fish.....

[Point-of-Sale Clerk]

STGRule

Of the 10,000 commercially harvested sturgeon this year what is the legal length they may be retained at? Maximum- minimum?

[STGRule]

***:
The commercial slot limit is 48"-60" which means they are vulnerable to that fishery for about 5 years.

[Pilar]

******, I heard somewhere that the recommended consumption is 4 ounces a month.

Normally I take 5 fish a year. Last year it was 3. This is pretty much a catch and release fishery for most year round fishers. The exception is the charters that pillage the Astoria fishery. They take a boat load every time.

Good points above about blaming the other guy and limiting every one's fishing but your own. (see example in previous paragraph).

Where is the meeting tonight in Vancouver?

[STGRule]

Pilar:
The meeting was last night, the 22nd. I posted the reply yesterday. Us lazy state workers had monday off so I didn't get a chance to ask anybody until yesterday. Sorry.